


I Feel Your Love In Each Embrace (So Show It)

by blametheone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorce, F/M, Love Confessions, M/M, Marital cheating, PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS I LEFT OUT EVERYTHING, Past Relationship(s), Smut, Undecided Relationship(s), there are strings tho, they pretend its no strings attached, they were in love then they broke up and this is the rest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6942655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/blametheone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry shook his head with wide eyes, in complete disbelief of himself. “It doesn’t hurt anymore, I’m not stabbed anymore, my heart doesn’t snap anymore. It’s just always hurts, all over. I physically cannot find any more strength within myself to put up with you anymore.”</p><p>They were together, once, and it ended. Only, it didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. warnings

**Author's Note:**

> this is a big pile of balls.

**okay okAY I'M S O RRY FOR DOING THIS BUT YOU NEED TO BE WARNED BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS H EA VY AND I DIDNT TAG IT 'CAUSE TOO MUCH**

 

SO...

 

be warned, the following media includes:

 _\- implied/referenced **past suicide attempts** (two, from louis)_  
  ^ includes explicit monolgue (and some dialogue) about the **notes**  
  ^ also **includes a description of what he did** for both attempts

\- implied **past drug abuse** (see; "description of what he did...")

\- _not entirely a suicide attempt but a very heavy, **emotional scene on a building ledge** with **suicidal connotations**_

\- a LOT of angst regarding their relationship

_\- internalized/forced **homophobia**_

\- modest!management literally get their own warning bc they're responsible for above

_\- gay **sex** (a lot of it)_

_\- straight **sex** (sort of)_

\- literally **everyone is bi** i'M SOR RY (except zayn and liam and The Straights)

_- **l** **ouis and eleanor**  are in a committed, **married** relationship, there is **cheating** and **consequent divorce**_

\- there is also **heated arguing** , crying, and it **scares their kids**

_\- crying. a lot of crying._

\- **ORIGINAL CHARACTERS** BECAUSE I SUCK

 

thank you and good luck!


	2. PROLOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> backstory.

“Woah!” Louis screeched as he suddenly collided with another body, hands freshly cleaned and eyes cast so downwards he hadn’t watched where he was going.

The other body just chuckled and steadied himself with a soft, “Oops, sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

Louis looked up from the floor and felt the Earth around them crumble. People weren’t meant to look like that in real life.

“H-hi,” he stuttered. “And no, no, don’t apologise, that was my fault, sorry.”

The boy shook his head, curls flying.

“‘S alright, really,” he assured, moving aside. “And I’m sorry, but I really have to piss. This conversation was really great though.”

Louis scoffed, mostly at himself as he realised the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Okay, Curly, I’ll see you around then?”

The boy scoffed as he quickly unzipped his pants and stepped up to the urinal.

“Yep, bye, Blue Eyes.”

Louis blinked but chose not to dwell on the name until he left the bathroom. As soon as he left the bathroom, however, his hands flew up to the swell of his cheeks, right under his eyes that were, in fact, blue, but they weren’t that striking, right? No one looked close enough at him at first glance to notice the colour of his fucking eyes, especially given they changed shade between grey to green-ish so often that they were hard to gauge anyway.

 _‘Well,’_ Louis thought to himself and his eye colour. _‘At least I know how they look today.’_

 

//// ////

 

Louis probably should have been more cautious than to jump into a stranger’s arms, wrapping his entire body weight around an unsuspecting sixteen year old. It _could_ have gone very badly very quickly, but rather Curly-From-The-Bathroom wrapped his thin arms under Louis’ arse and carried him around giddily, shrieking his laughter along with Louis’ joyous screams while everyone else watched them or celebrated themselves.

“Oops,” he quoted, remembering Curly’s first word to him with pathetic obsession he didn’t know he possessed. But then Curly’s lips split into a wide, dimpled smile and he giggled up at Louis childishly, quoting back, “Hi.”

 

//// ////

 

Louis was mostly sure he was mostly straight before he saw Curly in the bathroom. He’d had thoughts before, thought guys were okay looking before, woken up from a weird dream or two, searched up gay porn once or twice because he was curious — but he had a girlfriend and didn’t really see the appeal of guys.

Until _him_.

As soon as he saw that boy, he started thinking about it, _really_ thinking about it. He hoped to God it was hormones or a bisexual swing or something when he got completely turned off at the thought of sleeping with his own girlfriend. He had always preferred spending time with her over sex (and got off quicker with his own hand but he didn’t ever focus on that) and now that he had an alternative and he wasn’t slamming his laptop shut at the image of two men, it was hard to ignore how blatantly obvious this was.

Louis ran his hands over his face and exited the tab, deleting history quickly.

He was so frustrated he could cry, he could actually cry in desperation to know what the hell was going on within him.

 

//// ////

 

It didn’t take long for him to realise he was head over heels for the pretty boy with curls and green eyes and dimples whose name was ‘Harry’ and knew how to carry Louis’ entire body weight.

Shortly after such realisation he planned to break up with Hannah, and shortly after that he followed through. A few screamed lines and huffed insults down the phone line, ignored calls and texts and crawling into Harry’s bunk to snuggle next to his body because he was tired and lonely and sad and Harry was warm.

He doesn’t even really remember how or when they officially got together. Well, he probably could if he really thought about it, or read a fanfiction and found himself correcting it, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. All Louis knew was that he and Harry just got very close and very snuggly and at some point began timidly kissing and eventually just became an unofficial couple. He knew they discussed it at some point but no one actually cared much about that. They got together, was the main point.

And they were very together for a very long time. No care for fake girlfriends or rumours for the first six months, just those two and closed doors and giggles and shrieks and smiles.

But then it all did catch up, a little over a year after they started. All the rumours introduced all of these insecurities and the fake girlfriends took up more spare time than each other. They were on tour together, they worked together, they lived together — but they had absolutely no time for each other. There was stress and fame and tears, Louis could barely stand it and he knew for a fact that Harry wanted absolutely none of it anymore.

“Haz...” he remembered whispering one night into his curls. “Harry, I love you.”

Harry made a noise against his collarbone that spurred Louis on to continue.

“But we don’t have to do this anymore.”

Curls tickled his chin as Harry moved his head away and looked into Louis’ eyes, expression unreadable.

“What are saying?”

Sighing and sad eyes, kisses on cheeks.

“I’m saying if you don’t want to put up with this anymore we shouldn’t have to... I love you but I don’t know if that’s weighing out all the bullshit anymore.”

Harry moved his face back into Louis’ neck.

“I love you too, you know that? I love you so much...”

Louis closed his eyes. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Harry was absolutely silent, moving his arms around Louis’ waist and shifting his body closer, holding on tighter. He didn’t want to say it.

“We get tonight,” he spoke eventually. “I’m not moving from this spot all night...”

“And after tonight?”

“After tonight it would be a lot easier of we were just friends.”

Louis sucked in a deep breath and kissed the top of Harry’s head.

“Best friends,” he corrected, and Harry nodded.

“Best friends.”

It was on the top of his tongue, he so desperately wanted to whisper, ‘I love you, I do and always will’ but they weren’t together anymore. He needed to get used to never saying it again.

 

//// **2012** ////

 

He was scared and he was upset and he was lonely and he may or may not have tweeted that his relationship with Harry was bullshit.

 

//// ////

 

And whilst also scared and upset and lonely, Harry may or may not have deleted his phone number in a spurt of anger.


	3. CHAPTER ONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ten-ish years later.

//// **2023** ////

 

Harry never thought he’d feel so lonely. His whole life he knew he’d find love as cliché as a romance novel, or maybe as bad as the movies, and he’d have plenty of kids and live a simple, full-filled life. And he was sure, absolutely sure, that he would meet this love early in life, because that’s just what happened. Yeah, he assumed he might find fake love, go through break-ups and maybe a divorce or two because — realistically — that’s what happened too, but he knew he wouldn’t be lonely.

He was wrong.

But, how could anyone blame him?

Surely, no one would have suspected that Harry Styles, the ultimate romantic, would be pining over the same person for thirteen years, with brief, unstable flings in between to get people off his back.

That was incomprehensible.

Louis always thoughts he’d meet the love of his life and get married to them somewhere in his twenties.

A small part of him, in the back of his mind, thought that maybe he might go through a marriage — hell, maybe two — and find his love a little later, perhaps his thirties or forties (his younger self cringed at the thought of even being that old).

An even smaller part of him thought that maybe love didn’t even exist, that he was destined to marry once or twice, have a few kids and die.

But never, not even in his most wild and intangible dreams, did he ever expect to meet the love of his life at eighteen, then marry another woman while still in love with his younger fling.

It was incomprehensible.

But, his younger self didn’t think he’d become a closeted pop star who accidentally knocks up his beard — twice — and is yet to even admit his feelings by age thirty-two.

That, friends, was incomprehensible.

 

//// ////

 

They met in the bathroom of the X-Factor auditions. A great, romantic start to a relationship, no? They were steady going, and couldn’t keep their hands off each other for the entirety of the X-Factor, and were together for an entire year but broke off from giggles and smiles to something awkward and distant, and never got back together, excepting brief flings that they didn’t speak about, (assumedly) meaningless nights in hotels because pop stars had needs too but couldn’t drag a random from the bar without the press all over them.

And then Louis got married.

To _Eleanor_.

They found out she was pregnant sometime around August in 2015 and quickly threw together a wedding, claiming their break up was a rough patch and that they ‘got engaged months ago, just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it’ between Zayn and Perrie and the break-up of One Direction so on and so forth.

Most people saw through, but the point was they got married.

Amber Leane Tomlinson was born a healthy baby girl and Harry cried for an hour at home, alone, after receiving the text because now it was real, Louis had started a family with a _child_ , a baby girl to raise with _her_.

But that wasn’t his place. He and Louis broke up three times for good reason, he couldn’t jump in now, at aged twenty-one — four years after they last broke up — and tell a married man that he loved him.

Harry didn’t go to see Amber. He didn’t make any attempt to meet up with Louis at all, made no effort whatsoever to meet the new baby girl. Niall picked up on it and informed Liam, “Harry hasn’t met Amber yet,” which was really fucking weird because, “are you sure? Harry’s all over literally any baby born, ever!”

But, while it was speculated and they all had a pretty clear idea of why, no one pressed. Not Anne, nor Gemma, nor Ed, nor any of his friends. It just wasn’t brought up around Harry, the topic of Amber or Eleanor at all was never uttered around Harry. Just as Harry and any form of love wasn’t brought up around Louis.

Until about thirteen months after the girl was born, New Year’s Eve, he got a call at four in the afternoon that Louis tried overdosing on half a bottle of pills and a whole bottle of vodka — found and puked by his wife and sent off in an ambulance.

Harry rushed to the hospital so fast he honestly thought he would give himself a heart attack at some point, thanking God, his mother and his stupid personal trainer for being able to run as fast as he did to Louis’ room without passing out from stress and over-pumped blood. Eleanor was out the front of the door (he was only in his own room for privacy because celebrities got that kind of shit), rocking Amber back and forth in her arms and it was the first time Harry actually realised Eleanor was even more helpless than him in their situation, and he was being an absolute cockhead because this was also the first time he met Amber and she was already a year old.

When the doctor left the room and granted them permission to go in, Harry held Amber gingerly in his arms with a fond smile as Eleanor rushed in to see her husband. The baby girl looked up at him with an almost-scared expression because “who the fuck are you, where are my parents and why are you touching me?” but the second Harry smiled at her, Amber’s face fell into an “okay, you’re nice” which really spun a Harry out. She was only a year old, she was supposed to be scared of strangers. Amber babbled nonsense to Harry as if they were engaged in actual conversation, and Harry could not get over just how much she looked like Louis even though she was only a year old. She had the same nose, same eyes, same ears, and the same rusty chestnut hair. There was Eleanor in there too, but so much of Louis it hurt. And she was only a year old.

Eleanor quickly reappeared and informed Harry that Louis wanted to see him and that he should go in because she was going to be here all night anyway.

And Harry stayed in Louis’ room for a grand total of five minutes before he had to leave because everything was suddenly all too much — all too much pain, all too much stress and all too many stumbled excuses to leave.

 

//// ////

 

Then the second baby was born, in the May of 2019, three years after her sister.

Brittany Rose Harriette Tomlinson.

Harry was very happy his name weaselled its way into Louis’ daughter’s name, but the fact that it was Louis and _Eleanor’s_ daughter just made him cry, again, home alone, for an hour.

And then, again, history repeated itself, except this time it was only a mere eight months after Brittany was born that Louis tried again. This time he was smarter to avoid getting caught and revived, and tried out heroin in a hotel room.

Almost worked, if only a fan hadn’t spotted him and followed Louis to his room, and if Louis hadn’t left the door unlocked like he did. He had left it unlocked so someone would find him _after_ the deed was done, not call the ambulance before he could finish.

Harry got the call at nine pm, and again raced to the hospital. When he got there, he found El and the girls in the hallway (waiting room was too dangerous), waiting for the news from the doctor. Last time Louis’ stomach was pumped. Last time he didn’t inject a lethal substance into his veins. It was hell, absolute hell, in that space of slow motion and fast forward all at once, waiting for someone to say he didn’t make it. Harry didn’t even know how they could prevent an overdose of heroin like this.

But they did.

It took a half hour of waiting in the corridor (which shocked the fuck out of Harry, until he later found out that this stuff called naloxone only takes five minutes to go into effect) before a doctor called out for “Peter Thompson” — the fake name Louis was always called in under for any emergency — and informed them that he was stable and they could speak to him. Eleanor let Harry go first because, again, she was going to be with him all night.

Harry cried into Louis’ chest while Eleanor explained to her three year old daughter outside the room that daddy felt a bit sick and needed to stay out of the house for a while, but he was fine and would be back soon, trying to stop her eight month old from screaming her tiny lungs out at the same time.

When Eleanor entered the room because she needed to see her husband and her daughters were driving her insane, the situation already having her eyes lined with tears every second since the call, Harry immediately offered out his arms and took baby Brittany, trying to keep her hushed by laughing and smiling, and pulling Amber along by her stubby little fingers, offering to take them to Eleanor’s parents’ house for the night.

Something changed in him when he saw the look in Eleanor’s eyes that day and every speck of resentment he had for her faded. It wasn’t her fault, none of this was.

Harry gave her a hug and let her cry into his shoulder that night while Louis slept and the girls were at their grandparents’ house.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered in her ear, smoothing out her hair, his words meaning more than what anyone around them would ever interpret. “You couldn’t do anything, okay? We just need to build up from here.”

“How the fuck do we build up from here?” Eleanor spat. “This is the second time, he _learnt_ from last time, Harry. He’s going to k-keep _try-ying_ and-”

She broke down yet again and Harry had no clue how to respond, just closed his eyes and pretend he didn’t see Louis’ eyes flicker shut, obviously listening in.

“I can’t do this... Not without him...” she mumbled softly. “He’s my best friend...”

Harry suddenly found himself in his seventeen-year-old self’s shoes, saying the same thing when Louis said if he couldn’t come out he wouldn’t be in the band anymore.

“I know...”

 

//// ////

 

Harry made an avid effort to be a part of the girls’ lives after that.

When it came close to Brittany’s birthday the next upcoming May, he texted Eleanor to ask if they were doing anything (which they obviously were as it was her very first birthday party) as Louis was in rehab still (almost out) so he couldn’t very well ask him. Harry received an invitation through the mail of Brittany’s first birthday and a call from Louis to say he was out and a thank you for actually giving a fuck enough to visit him and the girls, taking them in for a night or two while Eleanor stayed with Louis.

“I know why you didn’t see them before this, Haz...” Louis had sighed, giving him a look with eyes that held so much yet were so closed off and unreadable.

“I was just busy, Lou, don’t jump to conclusions like that.”

Harry hated telling petty lies that did as much to cover his tracks as putting tissue paper over bright pink footprints, so he really didn’t know why he kept doing it.


	4. CHAPTER TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eleanor and louis.

Eleanor smiled fondly to herself as Louis bounced along the path beside her, fidgeting with his collar and already bouncing to the pounding bass of the shitty music blasting inside. It was some big label guy’s daughter’s birthday and all the stars were invited, very few actually showing up, but as soon as Louis read the invite he decided immediately that they were going.

Eleanor chuckled under her breath at Louis’ childishness, honestly, she married Peter Pan.

“Lou,” she called softly. “Don’t you think this might be a bad idea? I mean, it’s different now.”

Louis’ face fell comically. “But... Lot’s watching the girls, it’s okay! Come on, love, one night of being young again!”

Of course, of course that’s what this was about. Louis wanted to dress up again, shave his face clean and go to a nineteen year old’s party so he could forget for a few hours that he was, in fact, twenty-eight years old and he was, in fact, a father of two.

Louis always just wanted to forget.

The second they stepped in the door, Louis found friends and alcohol, and Eleanor lost him in the crowd.

Which was... fine.

 

//// ////

 

Louis was drunk.

Harry was also drunk, but not as much because Louis was smashed, he was so, so, so fucking drunk.

They were at some party somewhere, because Harry was lonely and Amber was almost five and Louis could afford to leave them at home with his sister babysitting and take El to some celebrity party to pretend they were young again for just one night. Harry was so lonely and so drunk.

All was good (he assumed), only Eleanor was nowhere to be found an hour or so in, but the alcohol and Harry Styles certainly were, apparently, because Louis was currently hanging off his ear and begging him to take him home.

“You’re really fucking hot, you know that? D’ya remember when I used to make you scream-”

“Louis, no, you’re married,” Harry shoved him off before he could get pulled in.

“Yeah,” Louis hiccupped. “But you’re not.”

No matter how much more hammered Louis was than Harry, neither of them could be held accountable (or, moreover, they didn’t want to be) when they woke up the next morning naked and intertwined, a half-empty bottle of lube and a barely-tied condom on the nightstand (Harry slapping his past-drunk-self for just leaving it, and leaving it _there_ ) at Harry’s house.

Harry didn’t even bother pretending to be asleep when Louis woke up. He played it off as normal and didn’t meet Louis’ eyes as he shuffled down stairs to get them each a juice and some painkillers, trying not to listen as Louis violently expelled the contents of his stomach into the toilet the floor above him.

They made a quick agreement over dry toast that they would never acknowledge that the previous night had ever happened, because Louis was married and they didn’t have feelings for each other anymore.

“Hey, Harry,” Eleanor greeted as he picked up the phone that morning. “Do you know where Louis is? He left the party last night without me and some people said they saw him talk to you... He hasn’t come home yet...”

Harry glared at Louis who sipped at his tea and stared at the floor.

“I haven’t seen him. I don’t remember last night at all, El, I’m sorry.”

She sighed dejectedly and Harry felt his heart sink with the weight of his lies.

“Look, love, just wait for him. He usually wakes up around now when he’s hungover, he’ll call you or make his way down soon, I’m sure,” Harry assured her. “Just hold on a bit. If he’s not home in the next hour, make some calls.”

“Okay,” she sighed again, a little bit more relieved but not much at all. “Okay then, thank you, Harry...”

“No problem, Eleanor... Say hi to the girls for me.”

“I will...”

Harry paused for a moment as he listened to the hang up tone blaring in his ear, lowering the phone and scowling at Louis.

“This didn’t happen, you don’t know whose house you wound up at because no one was home, you woke up clothed and on the couch of that house, and you’re going to go back to your wife and children right now,” he stood, picking up Louis’ shirt and keys and holding them out to him.

“Bye, H.”

“Go. Now.”

 

//// ////

 

Harry had shown up to every one of the girls’ birthdays since _the hotel incident_ eight months after Brittany was born. It’s not like he really did that much with his life anyway. He wrote songs with and for other people, sometimes featured on people’s albums in duets, and he had an ongoing music trade with his old friend Carter that stated he must write and tour with her every so often — but that was all just work. Harry didn’t live much of a life. He had no love interest other than quick fucks he managed to pick up in high-class bars, groupies and old fans that want to tell all of their friends they slept with Harry Styles.

He quickly gained the title ‘Uncle Harry’ (or Ha-wee, depended on which girl and how old they were), and could not be more proud that he was such a big aspect of the girls’ lives.

Except that he found himself staring at their father a bit.

Or a lot.

A lot more than what was acceptable considering he was a married man, a friend, an ex and not on the telly — which would give Harry the excuse to stare because it was a screen.

Sometimes Harry wondered why he was ever born. Was he just a catalyst to push other people’s lives ahead? A character that gave to the plot line but had no story of their own?

Sometimes Harry wondered if he actually had control.

After all, he could end it, if he truly wasn’t worth it, but everything he did was controlled by the fans and the fame — he couldn’t even contemplate letting go without thinking about its ripple effects on the world.

Or maybe he could.

 

//// ////

 

Suddenly, all too quickly, Brittany was coming up to her fourth birthday, Liam proposed to Dan and Eleanor divorced Louis.

 

//// ////

 

“YOURE SO TIED UP IN YOUR OWN LITTLE WORLD YOU CANT EVEN _WALK STRAIGHT!!”_ Louis screamed. He had hoped if they fought today it would be in their own home, away from people, away from the girls.

It wasn’t.

They were at Liam and Dan’s place, congratulating them both on their engagement with a short, reunion lunch (excepting Zayn).

Louis and Eleanor hadn’t been necessarily _fighting_ lately, more arguing. Sometimes very loudly. Sometimes things were thrown. Because Louis was an arrogant web of lies and Eleanor didn’t know how to not be a control freak.

Louis had hoped they wouldn’t put on a show for everyone, that they could be civil for once. The odds were not in his favour, but then, when were they ever?

It began with a squabble over God-knows-what that raised some eyebrows because that wasn’t playful bantering. It escalated to “Louis, for God’s sake, do you even know how to think about other people? How long are you going to be four years old?” and from there to “why the fuck are you even still with me then?!” with the girls ushered outside along with the rest of the adults to leave them inside to ‘sort their differences’.

_“See, LOOK WHAT YOU DID! Now you’ve made them LEAVE, this ISN’T EVEN OUR HOUSE!! WE’RE GUESTS HERE!!”_

And now they were here.

 _“I_ CANT WALK STRAIGHT?? BIG WORDS COMING FROM _YOU_ DONT YOU THINK?!” the faint, muffled shouts from Eleanor slowly drifted outside and everyone’s ears perked up because that particular conversation had not been brought up in years. For good reason.

“What’s that supposed to mean??”

“What’s that- IT MEANS I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE YOU WERE AFTER THAT STUPID PARTY, _TOMLINSON!!”_

 _‘Oh God,’_ Harry bit his lip and busied himself with Brittany before he could be caught listening into the fight because he knew _exactly_ where this was going.

“REALLY?! ENLIGHTEN ME, THEN!! ‘CAUSE I SURE AS FUCK DONT REMEMBER!!”

 _‘Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,’_ Harry grinned brightly in his exterior as Brittany played with him and mentally shat himself. _‘Louis, stop lying, you’re making it worse.’_

“Well, _Louis_ , do you know what I remember? I REMEMBER YOU WALKING THROUGH OUR FRONT DOOR LOOKING LIKE HELL, _HICKEYS_ DOWN YOUR FUCKING _SPINE_ AND SMELLING LIKE YOU SLEPT IN A PUDDLE OF CUM AND HARRY’S COLOGNE!! THAT’S WHAT I REMEMBER!!”

“ _REALLY_ , THAT’S WHAT YOU REMEMBER?! WHAT about...”

Their voices and shouting did not decrease, rather faded into the ‘not necessary’ area of everyone’s minds as all eyes turned to Harry, who just shrugged.

“Harry,” Ellie, Niall’s girlfriend, began slowly. “Did you...?”

“We were drunk, that night never happened,” he answered shortly. Liam scoffed and pointed to the house,

“Obviously it did.”

“It _didn’t_ ,” Harry pressed, looking up. The silence was deafening until he realised — the silence was deafening.

“Wait, I can’t hear them,” he commented, drawing the attention of the other’s to the fact that no one was screaming.

Until,

“ _FUCK this!”_ Louis shouted as he slammed open the back door, storming to Harry and pulling Brittany from his arms. “Dan, Liam, it’s been lovely, I wish you both all the best, but we have to go. I’m so sorry for our behaviour today, congratulations and whatever, I’m honestly happy for you- AMBER LETS GO!”

Liam bit his lip as Louis walked away and Ellie ran inside to find Eleanor.

“This isn’t marriage,” Harry piped up, Niall frowning at him and the newly engaged couple turning slightly. “Today was to celebrate your engagement and those two set a pretty shit example of married life. So, I’m reminding you that they’ve always been tense and distant. That’s not what marriage is like.”

Harry glanced down at his fingers briefly before his eyes flashed back up again.

“It’s just Louis and Eleanor.”

There was a deathly silence that Liam split by grabbing Dan’s hand and turning in so they were pressed close and face-to-face.

“I love you,” he whispered softly, like a secret just for them. Niall smiled and pat Dan’s shoulder as he walked past the couple and into the house.

Harry stood and wished them well, voicing a quick congratulations and hugging them each, before quickly running into the house.

Eleanor was sobbing in the middle of the living room, Ellie hugging her from the right side and brushing her hair aside while Niall sat on her left and spoke softly to calm the poor woman down.

Harry walked in and kneeled in front of Eleanor, lifting her chin.

“Hi, love,” he smiled, and Eleanor spluttered out one of those ironic laughs that can only be forced when you’re crying.

“Hi,” she sneered satirically, wrapping her arms around Harry’s neck.

She almost didn’t want to, because they had a disturbing amount of tension and hatred in their backstory, also considering Harry was the main contention of the last leg of their fight, but at the same time Harry was comfort. He was so much more familiar than the people on her sides.

“Har-ry,” Eleanor sobbed into his neck. “I’m sick of l-losing hi-im to y-you... Its b-been tw-elve y-years, he needs to pick... It’s n-not fair.”

Harry rubbed her back and cooed soothing hushes.

“I...” he sighed. “I know. I know.”

Harry pulled back and kissed her forehead.

“I’ll have to leave you here with the others, love,” he apologised. “I’m worried enough about leaving him alone, like this, let alone with the girls. Is it okay if I go?”

Eleanor pushed him away, nodding frantically.

“Yeah, go fuck my husband,” she spat bitterly and Harry made a face.

“El-”

“K-keep him safe, please?” she sobbed out, wiping her tears.

“I promise,” Harry nodded, nudging Niall with his shoe as he stood and walked past. “Make sure she stays at a friend’s place tonight, Ni.”

“‘Course.”

 

//// ////

 

Eleanor and Harry had a weird relationship. A big part of each of them was mad for stealing Louis, but at the same time they were both on the same side, and they both knew that the other was not entirely at fault.

It was like they were being cheated on by the same guy, they hated each other for it but knew the other was just as cheated as them.

 

//// ////

 

“Louis?” Harry called out as he stepped into the house, rather greeted by Amber rushing into his legs and Brittany stumbling behind her. He knelt down and scooped the girls into his arms.

“Girls, what’s wrong?” he asked, completely and utterly freaking out at how much Amber was trembling, noticing the tear stains on both of their cheeks.

“Daddy...” Brittany mumbled against his side. Amber swallowed and explained further.

“He was yelling at the wall when we came home, and we almost crashed the car and now he’s real quiet,” she said softly, obviously frightened. “He won’t say anything.”

Harry sighed in relief that thank God they weren’t hurt. He wasn’t expecting Louis to hurt them because Louis would never, ever do anything to harm his girls, but Louis also lost control when he got angry. He didn’t realise he had done or said something until it happened.

“Okay, girls, I’m going to call Mum, alright?” Harry assured them. “We’ll see if you can stay with her tonight.”

“Mum’s not coming home?” Amber’s eyes went wide and shit.

Like, shit.

“It’s just for a night, love,” Harry kissed her nose. “Mum and Dad are just having an argument right now.”

Harry caught a glimpse of chestnut hair as he looked through the doorway, into the kitchen, and knew full well that Louis was listening to him.

Harry glared and pulled his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through his contacts until he found ‘Eleanor Calder’ and holy shit was she really still under her maiden name in his phone?

Harry didn’t want to think about why he still hadn’t changed it in eight years.

 

//// ////

 

The girls stayed with Eleanor — who was having a girls night anyway with her friends — and Harry sat in the chair across from Louis, saying absolutely nothing, until Louis finally looked up, tears threatening to spill over as he crossed the room. He crawled into Harry’s lap wordlessly and pressed his face into the younger’s shirt.

Neither of them spoke a word the whole night, just fell asleep on the couch as Louis sniffled and sobbed into Harry’s chest.

 

//// ////

 

“El, please, we don’t have to do this...” Louis pleaded softly.

“No, we do,” she affirmed. “I’m sick of trying to love you, I’m sick pretending you aren’t still in love with him.”

“I’m not-”

“Please don’t lie to me, Louis.”

Louis stared at his shoes. “I don’t love him. El, come on, just think it through.”

“I have thought it through!” she protested. “I’ve been thinking about this for _months_. I’ve tried so hard to love you... But there’s nothing. I can’t love you, knowing you still want to be with him. Knowing I’m not even the right sex for you-”

“That’s not- I’m not-”

“Louis,” she cut through again. “Please... I want to find someone else... Someone who will love me and only me...”

Louis swallowed thickly, feeling his knees wobble a bit.

“El... Please...”

“I wish we could get through this but you know it’s not working...” she inhaled a shaky breath and Louis realised she was crying. “I don’t want to hold you back, and I don’t want to be stuck here.”

 

//// ////

 

The papers were finalised, they were under a judge for custody rights and they each had shared access to the kids. Eleanor had them primarily as she was keeping the house and had a stable income in the modelling business (she had become a famous judge and designer), and Louis had them on weekends (or whenever they mutually agreed to swap over) once he moved into a new house fit for both of the girls plus himself.

It was finished, done and dusted, and now Louis just had to find a house, which he did. Eleanor stayed at her friend’s house after the fight and Louis was already scouring every high-class real estate website for a place — looking around the house of choice at an auction and bidding the highest, moving into his new house three weeks after buying it.

The second everything was finalised, however, Louis felt his defensive walls rear their ugly heads and an angry bitterness set in.

Eleanor said she didn’t want to hold him back, so he wouldn’t be held back.

 

//// ////

 

Not in love with him my big, fat, fourth-wall-smashing arse.

 

//// ////

 

“Hey, Haz?” Louis breathed into the phone, trying desperately to hold himself together as he fiddled with the newly bought bottle between his fingers. “Want to come over for a drink?”

He could practically hear Harry’s eyebrows furrow.

“Lou, you shouldn’t be drinking and you know it.”

Louis chuckled bitterly. “Then why don’t you come over here to stop me.”

He was already slurring and Harry heard something fall with a soft ‘thud’, accompanied by a soft curse, but it wasn’t a bottle. At least, not glass.

“What was that, Louis?”

“Hmm? Oh, lube,” he said bluntly. “Good thing it didn’t spill, huh? That would be a waste.”

Harry sighed into the speaker and punched the bridge of his nose.

“Why do you... Louis, why are you asking me over?”

“Because I have an idea on how to not-waste the lube, babe! And you can’t say,” Louis changed his voice to an exaggeratedly deep one with an accent that wasn’t really Harry’s, “‘oh _Louis_ you’re _married’_ anymore, now can you?”

He chuckled manically, on the verge of tears. “You _fuck_.”

Harry sighed again.

“I’m hanging up the phone now.”

“No, Harreh! Wait-”

 

 **Harry** ; you shouldn’t be drinking. where’s your new house?

 

Louis clumsily texted back the address and he’s pretty sure he got everything spelt wrong, but nonetheless Harry ended up at his front door.

“HAZZAH!” Louis called out happily, unaffected by Harry’s scowl.

“Move, Lou,” he ordered, pushing Louis aside and rolling his eyes as the man stumbled a bit and caught himself on the doorframe,

“Mm, I love it when you play rough-”

“For God’s sake, Louis!” Harry snapped, stalking to the kitchen and picking up every bottle and can of alcohol he could see, moving them to the sink. “This is exactly what got you divorced!!”

“What?” Louis slurred with a childish pout. “Your good looks? You’ve still got the arse of a nineteen year old.”

“Yes, Louis, that’s exactly what got you divorced. Because you’re a narcissistic egotist who has no concept of putting someone else before him, undoubtedly brought on by his barely-troubled childhood!”

_SMASH!_

Harry whacked the end of a bottle on the side of the metal basin, glass spraying the inside of the sink and the beer flowing straight down the drain.

“You think with your dick rather than your brain, leading to your first child and, again, your divorce.”

_SMASH!_

“You can’t keep your mouth shut to save your life, not even towards your best friend!”

_SMASH!_

“And you have this disgusting obsession with stringing me along. Because you know I’m in love with you, but instead of giving a _shit_ about me, you’d rather a _mouth_ on your _cock_ for the night, _WOULDN’T YOU?!”_

_SMASH!_

Harry braced his hands against the sides of the sink, steadying his stature and breathing, staring at the glass shards and blinking back tears.

None of that was meant to be said.

Harry didn’t say bad things to people, he physically could not force insults out to people he had a slight care for. If there was any chance his words could hurt them, his throat clamped up and he couldn’t say a single bad word.

Maybe he knew Louis wouldn’t remember.

Maybe he was so fucking sick of it all.

The room was silent and Harry finally stopped focusing on his breathing and the sharp pinching in his palm of one shard that was on the sink edge he had clamped his hand over. He finally took notice of the soft sobs across the room, the shallow breathing and muted blubbers.

Right, Louis, drunk, emotional.

Harry blinked his eyes to refocus and opened his mouth, cut off when Louis whimpered,

“‘M sorry...” he sniffed. “I’m sorry, Hazza... But you... You can’t.”

His chest was heaving with words he didn’t know how to say, body swaying slightly.

“You can’t just _DO THAT!”_ he shouted. “You can’t be _you_ and then be all like ‘oh, nope! Off limits, _Louis’!!_ Have you realised how much I fucking love you?! No?? Okay, that’s fine!”

“Lou-”

“NO! _FUCK YOU!_ You can’t just be all you and shit and _single_ when I had to _marry_ MY FUCKING _B-BEARD_ , a-and then _AM-MBER_ a-and...” he was sobbing at this point, struggling to breathe.

“Louis-”

“W-why do I s-still love y-you?”

Harry didn’t know how to breathe.

He had forgotten how to breathe, how to talk, how to think, how to handle a situation like this and he feels like he’s about to forget how to stand up in a second.

Yet somehow within a whir of Louis crying and Harry relearning to breathe and timid steps of clumsy feet, between the hushed words and ‘what the fuck am I doing’, their whispers moved closer and soft kisses to needy fingers and from there to Louis’ brand new lavish bedroom with a great way to not-waste the lube.

And their worlds collapsed to a joined heap they could no longer build off, but they were each pretty hell-bent on ignoring that.

 

////

 

_His shirt fell to the tiled floor in a lump and Louis felt his heart drop as his eyes caught the mirror, back turned to it._

_There was a hoard of dark marks speckled across his shoulders, bites and bruises dappling their way down his spine, not missing the particularly dark hickey surrounded by pink, teeth-shaped indents just under his shoulder blade._

_“Mother fucker,” he swore, cursing Harry under his breath as harsh as he could manage. “How the fuck do I hide my entire back until they fade you little shit?!”_

_He did the best he could, keeping Eleanor at his chest and his back to the wall as much as possible, sure it was just a stress-filled dream when she pressed a kiss to one of the healing marks in the middle of the night, letting a tear drop onto the skin of his shoulder and whispering a strained, “Someone needs to teach you how to tell the truth...”_

////

 

Louis wakes up from his memory, hangover washing the dream away, to Harry kissing down his chest, and he honestly thought he had finally done it. Thought that the alcohol had poisoned him and he was in Heaven with this angel all over him.

Until, of course, he realised that he was Louis Tomlinson who was definitely not going to Heaven (assuming it even existed) and that a headache that pounded this hard against his skull should not be allowed in the afterlife.

“Haz,” he croaked, wincing. “Harry, babe, stop.”

Harry looked up at him with those eyes — those stupid fucking eyes — and _GOD_. _Okay_.

“What?”

Morning voice, morning voice, deep, gravelly holy _fucking OKAY_.

“I need you to move, love.”

Harry moved away wordlessly, letting Louis stagger off into the bathroom and felt a disgustingly familiar sting as he heard the violent expulsion so similar to the same instance that started this whole debacle. Harry rubbed his face and stood, cringing in disgust at the dried, white substance on the bed that crackled as he shifted.

Nasty. That was just completely and utterly nasty.

He was _going_ to shower but sheet-changing sounded more necessary at this point in time and honestly — it wasn’t that hard to find the laundry or linen.

Harry was just getting the new sheets on when he realised how quiet it was in the bathroom.

“Louis?” he called out gingerly. “Are you okay?”

“Mmhmm...” was the dull groan in return and Harry wanted to laugh. He really, really wanted to laugh. But he didn’t because he was a nice lad.

“Haz...?” Louis’ voice was small and soft but still audible. “Can you find painkillers?”

“‘Course.”

Harry stood, slipping on his pair of boxers as he walked out the doorway with the bed half-made and _yes_ he did the laundry completely nude.

“Lou?” he called back again. “Do you want tea?”

“You’re m’favourite...”

 

//// ////

 

Harry stared into his cup as Louis sat on the stool adjacent. The younger man’s mouth opened to speak and Louis frowned, incredibly tired and really not up for listening. His eyes drifted as he shook his head and, well-

“Why is my sink full of glass? A-nd… is that a dent?”

Harry glanced to the side, mouth closing, and cringed.

“You don’t remember?”

Louis shook his head minutely, making a shh-ing gesture at Harry.

“No,” he croaked. “I remember crying and something about glass that’s apparently in the sink and I’m pretty sure we fucked and that’s all I know.”

“Good,” Harry nodded. “I smashed some bottles in your sink. I’m sorry. I’ll clean it-”

“Harry,” Louis whined, rubbing his temples and hanging his nose over the cup of tea. “Stop talking, please? We’ll deal with the glass later.”

Harry nodded silently and there was a long pause before Louis sighed and lifted up his arms.

“I don’t want to sit up anymore,” he whined, voice barely above a whisper. “Carry me to bed, Harold.”

The younger man scoffed but held Louis up as they hobbled back down the hall, sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed (which he had gone back to finish making while Louis drank tea) as the older cuddled himself into the pillows and closed his eyes peacefully.

He was still out for the count a little over an hour later, Harry taking that time to wander the house a bit, contemplate a shower, tossing up between cleanliness or crawling under the covers.

He crawled under the covers.

“Harry?” Louis croaked suddenly as he woke up to a weight shifting on the mattress next to him and a pair of arms curled up and pressed to his chest. His headache was still there but it was only a dull discomfort rather than ‘I’m about to die’ and his stomach was no longer churning, the room no longer spinning.

“How long was I asleep?” he sniffed, blinking.

“A couple of hours?” Harry buried his face into the crook of Louis’ neck and shoulder.

“Mhm...” Louis mumbled tiredly, yawning suddenly and popping his mouth closed with infantile blinks and casting his gaze down to see Harry staring back up at him with an amused chuckle on his lips.

“What?” Louis scowled.

“You looked like your daughter.”

It was then that it clicked – Louis was a _father_ , a recently divorced father and this was not an okay thing to be doing with your ex-best friend/ex-boyfriend/ex-bandmate.

“Oh, shit,” Louis cursed, pushing himself away from Harry. “You... You can’t- we shouldn’t have-”

“Shouldn’t have what?” Harry snapped. “I don’t know if you’ve figured it out yet, Lou, but you’re single now. You’re free to fuck whoever you want, and you have the entire next four days to do absolutely nothing.”

Louis shook his head and opened his mouth-

“Let me be a rebound,” Harry pleaded, leaning closer. “Let me help you, let me stay here, please?”

“Harry-”

“Louis, I’m scared to leave you alone right now,” he admitted, wide eyed and sincere. “I don’t want to be, but I am.”

Louis was silent, trying to think of something, anything, to say.

“I have to shower.”

Not as nicely worded as he had hoped, but they were words nonetheless. Harry’s face was unreadable, eyebrows drawing just slightly in a flicker then smoothing back out blankly. He blinked down at Louis, then at his own shoulder, then up again.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Harry-”

“Trust me.”

 

//// ////

 

Harry honestly thought it would be him kneeling down on the shower floor with a cock in his throat and Louis gripping the glass door for stability, but apparently the world is in love with proving him wrong.

 

//// ////

 

The next two days were a blur of ridiculous amounts of exhausted energy and a couple of disturbingly high libidos, performing a marathon of carnal activities that Louis honestly didn’t think he would ever be able to accomplish after he turned twenty-six.

Maybe he got too used to Eleanor, he forgot what Harry was like. He forgot how much they used to sneak off with hands down pants and tongues in places tongues should not be so close to the public eye. He forgot how long Harry’s fingers were, and how his eyebrows drew and cheeks hollowed when he bottomed out, how his nose scrunched up when he was full, and he forgot how dark this man’s eyes could get. He did not forget the fact that Harry had a significant lack of gag reflex, but he forgot how it felt to have Harry’s lips tickling the wiry hairs at the base of his cock.

He forgot a lot, but in that intense thirty-six hours he remembered all of it, learning more. Harry had grown up a lot since they were together, he had learnt a lot since they were teenagers. Though he was still the same Harry, he had the same mannerisms and still performed the same techniques Louis distantly remembered teaching him in the first place, he was still the same man in bed as the boy he once was.

Just more practised.

 

//// ////

 

“Lou...” Harry sighed as the lips moved across his collarbone, brushing the swallows, teasing his nipple and slowly making their way down the middle of his abdomen.

“Love, I have to go soon...” he whispered as Louis continued. Harry’s waist tensed as the older man kissed lower and lower, leaving his lips attached to the skin longer and longer.

“I know,” Louis finally detached himself, smirking. “Just one more time, yeah? Then you can go?”

Harry chuckled. “You reckon you can last one more time?”

Louis rolled his eyes and smacked Harry’s thigh — hard — just as he took notice of the cock fattening just next to his other hand.

“Hey,” Louis looked up as he brushed his lips against Harry’s shaft, listening to the soft intake of air. “This doesn’t mean anything, right? The last few... days...?”

Harry wanted to cry, honestly, but he would never let Louis know that.

“‘Course not,” he smirked, pushing his fingers through Louis’ hair. “Let’s get moving.”

Louis certainly did get moving, licking up the underside of Harry’s cock and suckling the tip just to watch him squirm. He let the member drop from his lips and scrambled up so that his thighs bracketed Harry’s hips and he could move their mouths together. Louis jerkily picked up his hands and moved them to Harry’s waist, sitting firmly for a moment then dragging them up slowly, digging his fingers into the birdcage.

“Fuck me...”

 

//// **2023** ////

 

They didn’t speak again until Liam’s bachelor party.

“Hey,” Harry swallowed as he caught Louis’ gaze.

“Hi...” Louis stared at his feet.

They might jerk each other off in the bathroom once the party’s over.


	5. CHAPTER TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> notes suck

Louis decided to ignore Harry as much as he possibly could at the wedding, and Harry apparently had the same plan. They were obviously around each other, but barely any visual contact was made, let alone verbal.

In fact, the only time they actually addressed each other was when Louis scooped up Zayn’s three-year-old daughter (and _wow_ he did not expect Zayn of all people to show up, but hey) and called out for Harry and Niall to follow him as he carried the cackling girl out of the door to strategically give Zayn alone time with Liam, because he knew Zayn was Liam’s first choice for best man, definitely _not_ because Louis didn’t want to be around Zayn, psh.

Harry stayed a few paces behind Niall the entire time, eventually breaking off to be a social butterfly rather than dance back and forth to avoid Louis.

The ceremony began and Harry’s eyes kept darting to the house, waiting for Dan to step out. And waiting. And waiting.

He felt Liam’s desperation, waiting, and waiting and waiting for the one he’s always loved to prove he was there.

Harry shook his head and stopped associating Dan with his fantasy – that was wrong on so many levels.

No matter how much waiting everyone sat through, Dan did not emerge, only his sister and a note.

A fucking note.

Louis sped off after Liam like any good best man would, and Harry watched with sad eyes as Zayn followed quickly. Niall walked around with Annabelle, waving goodbye to people and generally just making her smile.

 

//// ////

 

Louis did not want to be there, standing in front of Liam. What the fuck could _he_ say, the confused little man who married and divorced his beard? Zayn was his saviour, walking in and taking over because Zayn knew how to be a husband. Zayn and Liam were on the same emotional level, always had been, and Louis could leave this shit with Zayn.

He ran from the scene as fast as he could, feet hitting the gravel at a slower pace when far enough away from the bungalow. He didn’t want to be around all of these problems — marriage, not-marriage, kids, Dan, Zayn, and _him_. He was so stupid, so fucking stupid, and he couldn’t get stupid Harry out of his-

“Oh!” Louis exclaimed as his body collided with another, “Sorry, I just-”

“Haha, oops,” Harry chuckled, steadying himself upright.

“Hi,” Louis replied on instinct, the upturned corners of his mouth plummeting and eyes widening at himself when he realised what had just fallen from his mouth. This was too much, this was too much, this was way too fucking much.

“Um...” Louis stuttered. “I’m gonna go find Ed or something, ‘scuse me.”

“Louis, please-”

Louis brushed him off, trying to quicken his pace but forced to turn by Harry’s hand clasping his shoulder and yanking him around.

“Stop it, talk to me, please.”

Louis sighed, blinking and pushing his lips together tightly.

“No.”

“Louis!”

“Harry!” Louis whined back, sprinting away.

“Nice coping mechanisms, Tomlinson!” Harry shouted sarcastically after him. “Ignoring your problems turned out really great every other time!!”

“I know, look how great you are!”

Harry’s expression fell at the comment, as did his hope that sat on the gravel idly as shoes came and clobbered it into the ground for the rest of the day.

 

//// ////

 

The guests were all gone, as were Zayn and Liam and Annabelle, Niall had said a quick goodbye about thirty minutes ago and it was just Harry packing the last few things up. Louis was also still there, but he wasn’t doing much other than sitting cross legged by the pool, dusk light washing over his features.

“Hey,” the younger called out as he picked up the last table. “Lou, can you help me with this?”

Louis looked up and got straight to his feet. They picked up the table together and put it down in its rightful place together and avoided looking up together and felt very awkward together.

“So, you’re still here because?”

“I don’t want to go home to an empty house,” Louis shrugged.

“You could have gone off with Niall, then? Or anyone else, for that matter,” Harry didn’t even look in Louis’ general direction as he quipped the comment. Louis sighed.

“Earlier, you wanted to talk?”

Harry frowned and turned to the open sliding doors to move into the kitchen, walking over and opening the fridge.

“Yes, and I very clearly remember you didn’t,” he recalled as long fingers pulled a water bottle gently out. Louis gulped.

“I didn’t want to make a scene, that was not the place or time for that talk and you know it.”

“I didn’t think I’d actually get another time, Louis.”

“Well, we have time now.”

Harry sighed. What was even there to talk about? A mushy confession of feelings that turned back completely unreciprocated? A hurried ‘let’s-be-friends-with-benefits-and-develop-teenage-crushes’ with a slow fuck to follow up? To say ‘I want you to talk to me but I don’t and I hate you as much as I love you right now’?

“I just need you to tell me where you stand.”

“On what?”

“Louis,” Harry glared sharply. “Tell me what you think my reasoning for not seeing the girls is. Tell me what the fuck you were thinking when I came over to yours after the divorce was finalised, or maybe what the fuck happened at the bachelor party? Or, actually,” he sighed, “I would love to know why you felt it was a fantastic idea to get drunk and say you’re still in love with me.”

All of the blood drained from Louis’ faced leaving him sickly pale and shaking with anxiety. He didn’t know what he was thinking, staying here to talk to Harry. He didn’t want to be confronted with any of those but what else could be causing the problems and _fuck_ ,

“Did I actually say that?”

Harry nodded silently, eyes fixed on the kitchen bench. There was a long, awkward silence of open mouths, about-to’s and should-i’s, broken by Louis’ soft, cracking voice. It was always like that, unless he was laughing or yelling. It was soft spoken and rough around the edges and vulnerable when he was.

“I thought you didn’t see the girls because you still hated Eleanor,” quiet, open, defenceless for once. “I thought that you still had a grudge from back then, and that you were mad at me because she’s _Eleanor_ and I was- am... I’m not, I wasn’t, I...”

Louis stuttered, the ‘g’ word dancing around his lips and the rest of him fighting against it.

Harry remembered a proud boy with a fierce smile who tattooed hidden meanings to his skin and adamantly denied heteronormativity. He wondered where that boy had gone, when he had grown up into a confused shell of a man.

“And I... I don’t know why I decided any of that shit between that weekend and now was a good idea, Harry, surely you know by now that I don’t have good ideas.”

Harry looked up at him, not even managing to smirk at the remark.

“And I don’t know...” Louis sighed, pulling at his nose and turning his gaze to the side. “I don’t know, I never know, okay? I never know what to do when it comes to you.”

The surprise on Harry’s face was unmistakable, standing in silent, unmoving shock as Louis grabbed his things and ran down to his car, speeding off into the night.

 

//// ////

 

They remained separate. They didn’t talk, they didn’t text, they didn’t even mention each other until the lights were out and they were whispering to themselves.

 

//// ////

 

 _‘I never know what to do when it comes to you...’_ Harry thought to himself as he tried to wash the stress from his skin, the burden from his shoulders. _‘What the fuck, Louis...?’_

The scalding water wasn’t doing so much as to wash the confusion away, but it certainly felt nice. The constant burning pressure between his shoulder blades and flowing through his hair. It did absolutely nothing to his situation with Louis but remind him of the scalding water of Louis’ preferred shower temperature when he was seventeen and knew his boyfriend by the feel of his fingertips.

Harry trailed his fingers along his tattoos. One sparrow was styled to be smaller than the other as a symbol of a relationship rather than just love – two different people mirroring each other. He ran his hands down over the moth on his abs and he remembered looking at the picture Louis sent him of some pride artwork with ‘it is what it is’ in cursive above the moth. There were so many ‘accidentally’ matching tattoos, some they didn’t mean for and others they didn’t understand why they were getting them but did it anyway. Louis insisted that he only wanted to poison one arm (which didn’t work after a while, but it was the original argument), and Harry claimed that his body art would be even messier than it already was if he strayed from one arm, himself.

They didn’t plan it, it just happened.

A strong-ringing metaphor for the entirety of their haphazard relationship.

Harry finally raised his arms to shut the water off, skin red and flushed from the searing temperature, and steam rising off of his shoulders.

He briskly and briefly ruffled a towel over his hair and wiped up the droplets on his skin, tossing the towel to a hamper and walking butt-naked to his guest bedroom (he was yet to replace the sheets he had stripped a few hours ago in his main bedroom). Harry carefully laid down his body down on the covers and decided to air-dry himself by just lying there because he honestly could not give a fuck.

Until his eyes landed on a note on the bedside table with _‘HARRY’_ scrawled on the folded top in Louis’ obvious handwriting.

“The fuck?” Harry sat up immediately, snatching the note up in his already-dried hands. He hurriedly opened it and felt his heart stop.

 _‘Harry, I’m sorry,’_ it began. _‘I’m sorry I’m a coward who would prefer to scribble a note on your spare paper and leave it in the nearest bedroom while you pack up tables outside. But I know that if/when we talk in a few moments, I’ll be defensive and edgy and stupid as per usual and you won’t get answers. So I’ll put it here plain and simple because we’re adults who can choose to not speak ever again or what._

  1. _I fucking love you_
  2. _I’m sorry for ruining everything_
  3. _I do realise it’s been a very long time since I was allowed to say the first point but it’s true_
  4. _I honestly love you, and I hate myself for doing everything I’ve ever done to you._
  5. _You always deserved better, but I so wish you want less_
  6. _We need to talk, properly, please?_



_\- Louis.’_

//// ////

 

**_[@Harry_Styles]_ ** _Bravery._

//// ////

 

Louis remembered 2015. He broke up with Eleanor, finally allowed to. He was going to finally go back and ask Harry if they could maybe try again, now that they were so close to the end, now that the rules were all lightening and Zayn had taken the spotlight off of them but, what if Harry didn’t care anymore?

Harry had obviously moved on, it had been years. He probably didn’t want to do anything with Louis ever again, which was understandable as it had been so long since they were anything. Who would be waiting for years to get back with someone who ruined them?

Because that’s what Louis did to their entire relationship, he ruined Harry’s life. He couldn’t say anything he wanted to anymore, he couldn’t hint anymore without being tied back to Louis. They had ruined each other, but moreover, Louis had ruined Harry. Louis had taken his first time and his first kiss with a boy, first serious relationship. Louis had stripped him bare and thrown him, naked, to the wolves of fame.

Why would Harry want anything to do with him?

 

//// ////

 

 **H;** I just found the note. We need to talk.

 **H;** When’s the soonest you’re free?


	6. CHAPTER THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a reunion, and harry and louis breaking each other.

Louis didn’t talk to him until Harry called at three o clock one August morning.

“... Louis...” he sniffed. “C-can you come over?”

Louis sat up dizzily, wiping his eyes. It was too early to deal with anything other than sleeping, but he knew that voice and what that voice sounded like when extremely distressed.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

“They...” Harry coughed. “I got a call fifteen minutes ago, management. Remember the reunion tour thing...?”

Louis’ face fell and he closed his eyes, bringing two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

“I texted the others so the-they’ll get it i-in the morning... But I... Louis I can’t-”

“Alright, love, just keep breathing, a’ight? I’ll be up in a second, I’m coming over.”

“Can you keep talking to me? Like, on speaker or whatever?”

Louis stretched his shoulders, popping his spine in the middle, and whispered a hushed, ‘of course’.

 

////

 

Harry remembered what it was like back then.

He remembered being forced into things he hated doing over and over and over because he’s Harry Styles so he needs to look exactly how they want him. He remembered being a doll, thrown around and around and given no break whatsoever. He remembered being dehumanised continually until he forgot that his name was, actually, ‘Harry Styles’ and that he was himself, that the name wasn’t another celebrity or material value. He remembered the intense envy he felt when Zayn left, the anger, because why couldn’t _he_ do that? Harry remembered not being allowed anywhere near his best friend even in the one place they could be themselves, on stage. He remembered every crowd losing its novelty when they saw them every night, regardless of how drunk, drugged or just up late they were the night before.

He remembered forced smiles and dancing like a fool to force his mind to think he was happy.

Maybe nine years was enough time to heal, but his panic attack in the middle of the night suggested otherwise.

 

////

 

Louis stayed on the phone the whole drive over to Harry’s, the younger man listening to his music in the car the whole way down. It was soothing, actually, to be with Louis the whole trip down to his house.

Louis hung up the phone with a quiet, “I’m here,” and Harry got out of his bed immediately, slipping on a pair of pants to meet Louis at the front door. He walked inside without even looking up at the house-owner himself, throwing an overnight bag that looked quite full and quite thrown together off to the side.

Harry watched with a tight posture, closing in around himself, as Louis kicked the bag aside then turned around to face him, arms opening. Harry moved himself into Louis’ embrace with a soft, “I’m really sorry for dragging you out here.”

Louis chuckled and moved the long, curly locks away from his own nose and mouth.

“Well, I’m here now. Can we sit or something? I’m fucking tired.”

Harry nodded and practically dragged Louis’ body down to his bedroom. Louis looked around with his mouth open in a small ‘o’.

“So, I put the note in the wrong bedroom after all?”

“Can we not talk about that?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

Harry shook his head and moved his body to curl in closer as they walked to the lush bed.

“Nothing.”

And for the first time in many years, Harry Styles curled into Louis Tomlinson’s chest with no carnalities involved at any point of the duration.

 

//// ////

 

“You always let them in,” Louis mumbled as he traced Harry’s collarbone, admiring the parted lips and peaceful lack of furrows between his brows — a rare sight when around Louis — four am and slightly plagued by insomnia. “You always let everyone in, no matter what... You knew they’d hurt you but you did it anyway, and you still do...”

His fingers, stubby and sure, made their way to the space between the two sparrows, pushing his index and middle fingertips into the space, scissoring his fingers apart to just touch each beak (or, try). He knows what the fans speculated, what they said about his sparrows, that one was Louis and the other was Harry. The smaller one had curved eyebrows and the larger straight. The symbolism was ‘too coincidental’.

But that wasn’t for him. Louis wasn’t worthy of the permanent messages inked on Harry’s skin. So many useless scribbles but so many meanings he applied.

 _“I regret a few,”_ he remembers Harry saying to an interviewer that questioned him and he remembers Harry scratching at his anchor subtly when they moved on, then the ship, then the rose.

“You let everyone in but me...” Louis whispered softly and sadly, curling his fingers into a fist in the dip of Harry’s chest. “I’m never, ever going to hurt you... not again... I couldn’t...”

Louis sighed and looked upon Harry’s sleeping face, so rested and peaceful. It was a nice change from the anger, frustration and confusion that he often adorned in Louis’ presence.

“Let me in, Harry...”

Why he asked this he would never know, because he couldn’t let Harry in to his own heart or whatever.

But, by this metaphor, then Louis had forgotten the key and couldn’t even get in himself, let alone let Harry in as a resident. He only hoped that maybe Harry’s door was open to him, with a bed built for two.

 

//// ////

 

 _“They’re two very broken people who keep trying to fix each other, but refusing to let the other fix them...”_ Louis read elegantly from the book he had pulled off of the unnecessarily large bookshelf from one of the other rooms down the other end of the floor (which was, by the way, enough exercise for the rest of Louis’ year). Harry’s eyes blinked open at the voice blaring through his sleep-fogged mind and frowned up as Louis continued.

_“It was as if they’d-”_

“Have you slept?” Harry cut over, Louis skilfully ignoring the question and continuing to read his excerpt from the book.

_“It was as if they’d pull pieces of themselves out like ‘here, you can have mine instead’ then let themselves topple to the floor as a stack of cans would if one from the bottom row was plucked.”_

He looked up, one eyebrow raised and scoffed. “This is one depressing book, Harry.”

“It’s a good book, though,” Harry argued, voice deep and rough and oh. Louis blinked up at him and coughed to clear his thoughts away — pointedly ignoring Harry’s smirk.

“Yeah?” he cleared his throat. “What’s it about?”

“You’re the one reading it, you tell me.”

Louis threw him a look then shook his head, already knowing what it was about.

“Of course you’d have this book on your shelf,” Louis chuckled and Harry felt an unwarranted surge of anger flow through him.

“What do you mean, ‘of course’?” he snapped, watching the same snark in Louis rise instantly.

“Oh, I don’t know, two boys falling in love in a coffee shop? It sounds exactly like the kind of book you’d have, one you’d read when you do that thing where you fantasise about what happened if you weren’t famous,” he sneered and Harry suddenly wanted to throw something hard and heavy right at his face.

“Are you fucking kidding me, is this about it being a gay book?!” Harry shouted, not missing the way Louis’ shoulder’s flinched ever so slightly, though he said nothing. “Of course it’s so fucking typical that _Harry_ would have a gay book on his shelf, right?”

“Yeah, actually, it is!”

“Right, how fucking typical of me to have a part of me on my bookshelf, how fucking dare my house reflect _who I am_.”

Louis froze, making a tense face. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, really, then how exactly did you mean to tell me that you think it’s weird, perhaps wrong, but certainly _typical_ that I’m open about my sexuality?”

“How?” Louis scoffed. “I wasn’t talking about the fact that it’s a romance between two guys, Harry! All I said was ‘of course you have this book’!”

“And what exactly was that supposed to mean?”

“That it’s a _fanfiction!”_ Louis almost screeched, opening where his thumb had bookmarked the page and reading aloud tempestuously. “ _‘Charles and Julien, one upstanding English, the other upstanding French. An interesting taste in traditional names, ironically contrasting their modern world nature.’_ ”

His eyes looked up, turned grey to match the duvet and the storm of tension between them both, or like smoke covering the blazing fire under their words.

“ _‘Julien studying maternal nursing after failing his first round of A-Levels, defiant nature running hand in hand with his obvious ADHD. Charlie an indecisive almost-student, stuck in an awkward gap year of not being able to decide between Psychology, Law, Medicine or English.’_ ”

Harry sighed and ran a hand back through his hair, shaking it a little. Louis frowned as he silently tossed the book, hitting Harry hard and fast in the stomach.

“I’m not fucking stupid, I’ve seen it before,” Louis hissed. “So, yeah, of course you have this book.”

And, wow, ouch. Harry felt the sharp comment like a stab to his throat.

‘Of course’, as if Louis expected nothing more from Harry than to be pathetically obsessed with him, as if he expected nothing less than a teenage crush Harry refused to let go of. He perhaps didn’t mean to insinuate that Harry was pitifully fixated on a brief idea, but the comment was as if Louis himself wasn’t completely head over heels for a possible dead end as well.

Louis was Louis, almost nothing he said was straight forward and simple. He always insinuated and manipulated, he knew what he was saying. Harry shook his head and walked out of the room.

“I don’t need to listen to this. I don’t even know why I asked you over anyway, _Zayn_ was better help than you.”

He turned down the corner to the bathroom and heard Louis’ footsteps pitter-pattering quickly after him.

“Since when did _you_ talk to _him?”_

“I called him, last night,” Harry answered, not turning back and feeling like they were almost-divorced newlyweds or something. “He’s touring with us, he was a part of the contract that stated we have a reunion tour, so he’s coming with us.”

“No,” Louis stopped in his place. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to.”

“ _Harry_ , not the _fucking time_.”

Harry rolled his eyes as he reached the bathroom he had been heading for, hand stopping lightly on the doorknob, rubbing his fingertips over the cold metal.

“Louis. It’s the five of us again, get the hell over it,” he turned around. “You’re an adult, believe it or not.”

“When did you get so snappy?” Louis sneered. Harry just rolled his eyes, again, and pushed his weight down to open the door swiftly, slamming the bathroom door closed again once his whole frame was encompassed within the lavishly tiled space.

“Harry,” he heard the whine behind the door and scoffed.

“No, Louis,” he cut over. “Do me a really big favour, okay? Shove your tiny, little hand down your pants, grab your balls and grow the fuck up. I asked you for help, all I needed was for you to just not be a fucking _arse_ for a few _hours_ , but apparently you can’t even manage that.”

“Haz, listen-”

“Leave.”

Louis said nothing, and if Harry could see through the door he would know that Louis had rolled his eyes up with a cocked jaw and sucked in cheeks, containing his frustration with a calm demeanour. Calm for Louis Tomlinson, that is.

“Harry, I just w-”

“ _Leave_.”

“Harry-”

“Please, _LEAVE_.”

Louis rolled his eyes again and stayed silent for half a minute to compose himself into a calmer state, letting the man in the bathroom believe he had left. Once enough time had passed, his _tiny, little hand_ rapped a quick couple of knocks on the bathroom door.

“Louis...” such a whine hadn’t been heard for quite some time.

“Harry, please. I-...” Louis sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“Ready to stop being a teenage girl, or should I grovel a bit?” Louis remarked bitterly, expression remaining calm as his elbows came to rest against the bathroom door.

“I think grovelling sounds nice,” Harry bit back through the door. “But I’d prefer if you did it from a larger distance.”

“Harry, for fuck’s sake!” Louis snapped. “Stop being impossible! I drove out here for you, I’m not about to drive back out again with everything unresolved! Christ, we have to start touring and interviews and all of that utter bullshit in _two weeks_ , I’m not playing this fucking game with you again! Stop acting like a child!”

Harry said nothing, just sneered at the door and shucked off his pants, turning the taps across abruptly to get the water started, ignoring everything Louis said.

He knew he was being childish, that this whole argument was completely unnecessary, but fuck, if Harry didn’t feel like he deserved to be defiant and childish sometimes. He knew he was being impossible, but maybe he was sick of dealing with this enormous wall of unwarranted bullshit, and maybe it was time Louis was on the receiving end of impossibility for once.

Harry stepped under the spray once he was naked and the water was a decent temperature, and felt a hint of relief and bit of disappointment when he heard nothing from behind the door.

Louis, however, was still standing and still frustrated on the other side. It didn’t take him that long to realise the door was unlocked and that he could just walk in.

But was it worth it? Was it worth forcing him to listen, worth putting a hand on Harry’s dick or something equally carnal just to manipulate the younger to agree with him?

 _Yes_.

Harry startled when the door opened suddenly, ripping the curtain into place and yelling for Louis to get the hell out as the older shut the door softly behind him and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it aside.

“I’m not getting out, Styles,” Louis remarked.

“Louis, I don’t want you in here,” Harry said steadily, holding the shower curtain firmly against the wall.

Louis’ hands halted on the waistband of his boxers, joggers already kicked off. He sighed and stood up straight.

“Haz, please,” he begged softly. “All I wanted was to make sure you were okay, talk about the note if you were. But I need you to stop blocking me out. I’m sorry for the book and whatever the fuck else I did wrong.”

“ _Ha_ ,” Harry barked out a bitter, emotionless chuckle. “The _note?_ You want to talk about the note. That’s funny, you wanted nothing to do with it when _I_ _asked_ if we could talk about the note, which _you_ , in turn, asked to talk about in the first place, by the way.”

Louis was silent for a second before he scoffed and pulled his pants back on.

“You know what, fuck you, Harry,” he remarked. “I’m sorry I’m staggering behind you and your pride and your perfect life where you feel free to tell everyone everything. I’m fucking sorry I didn’t figure myself out until I was twenty five, I’m sorry I can’t keep up with your pace, I’m sorry I had to deal with a divorce and two kids rather than your fucking feelings.”

Louis tossed his shirt on and stormed towards the door, screaming as he went.

“I’m sorry you don’t like it when I try to fix things, okay?! You want an apology, there’s your fucking apology, _THIS IS WHY I DIDNT RESPOND!!”_

Harry frowned and shut the water off as Louis slammed the bathroom door after him. He stepped out and opened the door.

“IT’S NOT ONLY MY FAULT!!” Harry yelled out as Louis picked up his bag and all but ran for the front door.

“THAT’S WHY I APOLOGISED, _ASSHOLE!!”_

 

//// **[A/N; so close.]** ////

 

Harry thought Louis was good at avoiding him before, but apparently, you can go further than just avoiding and ignoring.

Louis was literally nowhere.

Harry called the house, even dropped in to apologise, talk things over, make sure Louis hadn’t resorted to drastic measures (Harry wasn’t assuming, just being cautious), but he wasn’t there. He called Eleanor, asked if she knew by a twist of fate but was met with a “he asked me to take the girls back while you guys do this whole tour thing, hasn’t that already started?”

It was like he had disappeared off the face of the Earth, and it made Harry worried.

There was no ‘fuck you, you ruined my life’ text. There was no slurred call spurred by alcohol-soaked blood. There was no call from a friend telling him that Louis was there, out of it and mad at “‘arreh” or “Hahree”.

Nothing.

Louis was gone.

 

//// ////

 

Harry sat with twitching fingers in the conference room they were to meet up at, all _five_ of them. They hadn’t all been in the same room since Liam’s wedding, the last time before that was eight years ago, and hadn’t spoken properly to each other as a group since God knows when.

It was scary, the thought of all five of them in a conference room with a couple of management leaders all over again.

Harry was the first one there, followed by Niall, then the management crew. The others were now thirty seconds late and Harry’s heart was thumping.

What if something happened to Louis?

What if his car crashed on the drive home and no one even knew, and that’s why he had been missing?

 _‘Fuck, that’s so plausible,_ ’ Harry thought, frantically trying to remember any sign of an accident from the drive in. ‘ _There were skid marks on the road, fuck, Louis-’_

“‘Ello, lads!” a familiar voice shouted as the door was thrown open and Harry felt his entire body go limp with relief, heart racing as it giddily tried to reclaim its original pace.

“Louis!” Niall called out, throwing his arms open but making no effort to move from his place reclined back in the chair with both feet propped on the table. Harry just smiled softly to himself as Louis shot Niall a grin, plopping down in a chair and spinning like a child. The room fell into the strange almost-silence of a full room of not talking once again, Niall pulling his hat over his eyes, Harry playing with one of his rings and Louis using his toes to push back and forth in the wheelie-chair.

“Where the hell is Liam?” one of the crew mumbled under her breath in the silence. “I expected Malik to be late or absent, but both of them...”

“Give it a sec,” Louis rolled his eyes, answering to her hushed mumbles meant for no one but herself. “Trust me, he’s a control freak still. He’ll be here.”

“What about Zayn?” Niall mumbled. No one in the room was particularly pleased with Zayn, especially Louis, but they were grown men who should know by now how to move on, right?

“Present,” the man himself said as he walked through the door, startling the three. Though, even more startling was Liam trailing in behind him.

“Nice timing, Payno,” Louis commenting — definitely, totally, not ignoring Zayn because he was above that.

“Expected less, Tommo?” Liam commented. Harry said nothing, Niall said nothing, Louis toed at Liam’ knee as if neither had grown past the age of sixteen as he sat between Louis and Harry, and Zayn sat quietly off to the side of the table, three seats away from Niall, which made him five from Louis and six, Harry.

“Alright!” one of the representatives, Craig, clapped his hands. “Let’s run over this quickly. This is a list...”

So on and so forth. This is what you’ll do, who you’ll speak to, what we suggest you say (Harry noticed happily that they were merely ‘suggesting’ rather than forcing, though that was probably because there was no upper hand ultimatum to take their jobs away this time), we start tour practise tomorrow, we’re going to re-record an album of greatest hits, and Zayn, mate, you won’t be singing on the ones from the fifth album until the tour.

 

//// ////

 

Louis and Harry actively avoided each other and should both receive a medal for how valiantly they managed to treat the other as non-existent even when pressed up next to each other.

 

//// ////

 

“ _Come on, you break me better than that,”_ Harry sang quietly to himself, pen scratching the newly formed lyrics across feint lined paper. “ _You’ve taught me to fight, now fight me back...”_

There was a cough above him and Harry’s eyes raised to find gold iris framed by unmistakably long lashes.

“Can I help you?” Harry’s eyes rolled back to his lyrics with a bored expression as Zayn sat down in front of him.

“I think someone needs to explain to Louis that I’m not a postman and he’s not fourteen.”

Harry scoffed out a chuckle and looked up to the older’s amused expression.

“Should I know why? And he’s sixteen, not fourteen.”

“Well,” Zayn shook his head with a giggle. “Louis told Liam to tell me to tell you that you’re a twat.”

Harry choked a shocked noise out of his throat that sounded half offended and half in love.

“Alright, well, tell him he’s a prick.”

Zayn scoffed again, standing.

“Tell him yourself. I’m not a messenger, you aren’t fourteen.”

Harry smiled fondly to himself then caught his expression and quickly rectified such a heinous action with a grumpy pout and a text to Louis that read, “ _z’s not mailman, you’re not a child and i’m not a twat._ ”

 

 **Louis** ; thats a lot of things were not  anything you are ?

 **Harry** ; shouldn’t you already know? talk to me directly.

 **Louis** ; Ha, you’re acting like I didn’t try and fix this  Fuck off Harry

 

//// ////

 

The interview, their first one as a group since the split, was awful.

At least, that’s how Louis saw it.

First of all, Harry (dorky, awkward, slow-speaking Harry) had to pick up where Louis left off for one of the very first answers because the eldest was caught up in nostalgia for a moment. Secondly the bloody interviewer brought up Zayn’s divorce and the kids, too, which pissed them all (and probably most of the fan viewers) off to no end. Then Liam had his little thing about sexualities on live television which has happened before but not with _One fucking Direction_ , and Louis couldn’t help himself.

He couldn’t help but freeze over when Liam stated, “No one in this band is gay,” because no, Louis wasn’t, but guilt and dread and remembering the look in Harry’s fucking _eyes_ filled his system and brought all movement to a complete halt for a second or so.

Because Harry and Liam were out and he promised, he _promised_ on his nineteenth birthday that the moment he was able to, he would come out, loud and proud.

And maybe that’s what this was about, too, his _thing_ with Harry. Maybe it was about the fact that he was _still_ closeted, though he promised he never wanted to be.

Not fully, but partially, maybe.

 

//// ////

 

“Haz,” Louis caught his arm as they left the studio, all piling into the one van like old times. He said nothing more, just pulled Harry with him into the back seats and let the other three squabble over who sat up passenger and which two were in the middle seats.

Harry shot him a look, which was not met, that explained in its entirety how confused and wary he was to sit with Louis, but he did anyway.

The hitch in his breath and the jump of his skin signified how unexpected it was to be manoeuvred so that Louis was in his lap, pressed against his chest, legs draped over the seats. Louis made himself comfortable, checking for signs to make sure Harry was also comfortable, and looked up slowly to see dim green eyes blinking back down at him.

“Hi,” he grinned, receiving only a raised eyebrow in reply. Louis blinked.

“I’m sorry if this isn’t okay,” he quickly stated, suddenly panicked about how Harry had previously reacted to proximity in the bathroom. “But I wanted to talk without having a rude, bitchy argument that doesn’t solve anything.”

There was silence (well, as silent as it could get between the drone of the engine, the low hum of Daft Punk and Niall’s chattering banter with Liam over God knows what) between them as Louis felt a hand come to rest on his chest and another play with his hair absently.

“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled. “I’m really, really sorry, for everything. I tried and I tried and I didn’t think of what you-”

“Harry,” Louis cut him off. “I don’t... I don’t think apologies are a good way to start this. Can we just, start again?”

Harry frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” the smaller huffed. “We haven’t been introduced yet, I’m Louis, and we have no history.”

Harry, though Louis couldn’t see it, slowly began to smile. His lips stretched until his teeth bared and his eyes crinkled and had Louis been looking his heart would have fond-ed in ways his brain wouldn’t admit.

“Hello, I’m Harry, and I kind of like some of our history if I’m honest, but only some,” he chuckled. “We need to talk about this, properly.”

“Just not in the car.”

“At the hotel?”

“I’ll go into yours, or...?”

“Yeah.”

They were whisked from the car to the hotel in a flurry of feet stomping, screaming women with children on hips and camera flashes galore.

Louis wanted to yell a great, big ‘ _FUCK OFF’_ to them all, but he caught himself, all the while realising how out of practise he actually was with the whole ‘fame’ thing.

They were thrown into an elevator, hotel key cards thrust into their hands, and Louis shoved his carelessly in his back pocket and followed Harry’s _Louis Vuitton_ travel bag all the way to a familiarly lavish hotel room.

“So,” Louis began, crossing his arms with a barely-amused expression as the door shut slowly and Harry walked past him to the bed, tossing his bag on top of it. “There are some parts of our history you like?”

“Not much,” Harry smirked, still turned around. “But parts, yes.”

“What parts?”

“What parts do you think?” he finally turned, crossing his own arms, but a bitter smirk still playing on his lips. “I’m particularly fond of the parts where we _weren’t_ screaming at each other, or when we were actually _on_ speaking terms. Those parts were rather nice.”

Louis felt his words like a slap to the face, delicately put and spoke with sharp edge that Harry almost never possessed.

“They were, weren’t they?” he sighed out a chuckle, taking a step forward. “I liked those parts too.”

Harry raised an eyebrow and his chin, looking down at Louis with an unreadable expression as the older continued.

“So, where do we stand?”

God, he hated those words, how did they manage to make their way into his vocabulary in that particular order?

Harry shrugged, probably not as fussed with those words or at least hiding it really quite well, and bit his lip.

“Where do you want us to stand?” was his response and Louis had to physically restrain himself from punching the wall or maybe crawling up into a ball and sobbing a little bit (it was definitely the second one, in case anyone’s wondering). Harry’s face was completely void of emotion but Louis had spent a good handful of years reading through the vacant expressions what Harry had been told to shut away. After years and years of being constantly told that his face was too readable, Harry had learnt to shut off what he actually felt and Louis had learnt how to look past the emotionless wall.

Louis shook his head. Because fuck this, fuck honesty, fuck his feelings, fuck their past and fuck everything.

“I don’t know, just-” he sighed. “I don’t want to stand… together.”

And maybe Harry’s shoulders dropped with the tightness of his jaw, and the crease between his eyebrows smoothened and raised up. And maybe Louis felt like a dick, and maybe he wanted to shoot himself in the foot and maybe this needed to be done.

“You…” Harry bit his lip. “I… okay.”

He took in a sharp breath and nodded, awkwardly scratching at the side of his neck and Louis really wanted to shoot himself in the foot. But it had to be done, right? This tug of war between okay and not, between fucking and glaring, in love and in hate – it wasn’t healthy and it needed to have a stop put to it for good.

“I’d like you to leave now,” Harry said, almost successfully hiding the wobble in his voice and looking down to avoid the surely noticeable wetness of his eye-line being spotted. Louis seriously needed someone to shoot him, not in the foot, somewhere more painful and life threatening – because really, why has it not yet been made illegal to make this man cry, _shit_.

Louis nodded quickly and turned wordlessly to the hotel door, open, close, two doors down from Harry’s, swipe, push, step, shut.

It was on reply in his head, over and over, haunting him, _“I just don’t want to stand… together.”_

The pitch, the tone, the spacing, the pace, the way his accent made different inflictions, and the look on Harry’s face when the words were said, running through his head over and over and over and over again it wouldn’t go away, it wouldn’t let him _breathe_ , he _couldn’t breathe._

There was a very small voice in the back of his head reminding him that he felt the exact same that morning thirteen years ago when he broke up with Harry ‘for good’ and had to watch him walk out of the room and never walk back. And a bigger voice was cynically nostalgic in its scorning irony, reminding Louis that now _he_ was the one walking out and never coming back, except that both times it’s been Louis’ fault.

Louis throws up in the pretty, white, porcelain toilet.

(And two doors down, Harry does too.)


	7. CHAPTER FOUR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zayn, louis and suicide.

Rehearsals for tour started the very next morning at seven with bleary eyes, messy hair matched with a couple of beanies, and five fresh set lists still warm from the printer.

Harry groaned quietly as he read the list but bit his lip to keep his disgruntled thoughts to himself, though it was unanimous knowledge between everyone in earshot that his groan was because _‘Gotta Be You’_ was sitting there, smack-bang-fourth from the top.

They began with vocal warm-ups and then the age-old, traditional set up (that was actually unavoidable because there was no other way to do it) that they were all actually a little sick of still, standing in a circle with the vocal instructors and mentors sitting on fold-up camping chairs between them, getting the harmonies right for each song. Louis forgets half of the lyrics, Niall makes up three quarters of his, Zayn misses a third of his lines and has to be prompted as well as relearning the songs in general, Liam’s voice breaks twice and Harry pretends he has to piss just to leave the circle about halfway through ‘ _Perfect’_.

They take a break about forty-five minutes in, which Zayn takes upon himself to make amends, beginning with the hardest rip to sew back – Louis.

“Hey,” Louis turned as he heard Zayn’s unmistakable voice behind him. And of course, there he was, standing there with his one and a half inch height difference to Louis, though the slump of his guilty shoulders made him seem smaller.

“Can we talk?” he mumbled and fuck Louis if that didn’t slap him in the cheek with a hand full of guilt, memories of his ‘interaction’ with Harry last night stuck under the fingernails. He shook the thought away, however and nodded, motioning for Zayn to sit over by one of the equipment boxes with him.

Because, here’s the thing with him and Zayn – they haven’t spoken since 2015, since their big private fight became a slightly smaller public one and Louis decided he didn’t want to deal with Zayn’s bullshit. Only, Zayn grew up, and so did Louis, but they haven’t ever known the grown-up versions of each other. All they had were foggy memories of drug-induced giggles and being high on stage with/because of one another, or screaming at one another, and at the far back were some foggier memories of a shy kid with a raven quiff and a taste for shocking others tugging along a smiley kid with suspenders and a craving for mischief at the downfall of others.

But all of that was a long, long time ago. Only, not Zayn nor Louis knew if or how much the other had even changed. They each could only hope.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn blurted as he sat down. “I mean, like, _fuck you_ , man, for some of the shit you said and did… but I’m really… I’m sorry for, like, just being a cock and I don’t want everyone on this tour to hate me, yeah?”

Louis snorted and pushed his tongue into his cheek, shaking his head. “You are a sad little shit, you know. Where’s my big “I’m Sorry” banner and you begging on your knees?”

Zayn scoffed. “Fuck off, if you deserve that I at least deserve you beggin’ me, yeah?”

“For what??” Louis cackled. Zayn made a face of ‘are you joking?!’ mixed in with a smile.

“What do you mean, ‘for what’?! Don’t you remember all the shit you said to me off camera? And then what you did on camera?”

Louis stuck his nose in the air. “I have been nothing but an angel my whole life, Malik, the fuck are you talking about?”

 

//// ////

 

“Hey,” Liam nudged Harry’s ankle with his foot. “Look who’s already kissed and made up.”

Harry looked over to where Liam was pointing and shook his head at the scene. Zayn running around with his head crouched and arms flailing to cover himself, whilst Louis ran hot on his heels with two open bottles of water waving around dramatically in the air, both of them screeching with laughter all the while.

Liam chuckled and rolled his eyes dramatically, twisted the cap off his own bottle while Harry giggled.

“Now,” the younger started with a smirk, “Now all we need is for Niall to stop being anti-social in the corner with his phone, and it’ll be like we never ended.”

Harry grinned brightly and Liam rolled his eyes fondly, taking a sip of water and choking on it as Zayn and Louis suddenly came racing towards them both, attacking poor, naïve Liam with tickles and water bottles while Harry legged it.

Louis was staring, and Harry ignored him.

 

//// ////

 

They began rehearsals all bright and early again the next morning, crew members full of hope that something would actually get done this time – band members full of dread at the thought of actually getting anything productive done because that was not how One Direction rolled, no _sir_.

And, Harry was staring, and Louis ignored him.

 

//// ////

 

Somewhere between the six am start and here Harry had pulled Niall to his feet as if they were seventeen and carefree, the two dancing around the middle of the floor of the arena like idiots. Liam was watching them with a grin, talking on and off to one of the sound guys, though he looked about three minutes away from joining the youngest two in the middle of the floor. And over to the side, Zayn was sprawled across the floor, staring up at the ceiling with his calves balanced across Louis’ crossed legs, the older man sipping casually at his water bottle while they spoke.

“Can you believe this was in the contract? I thought that I wouldn’t have a part of that thing ‘cause like, I left before, but nope,” Zayn sighed. “Seven years after the end, if you’re all alive, you do one more tour.”

 _‘If you’re all alive, if you’re all alive, if you’re all alive,’_ span round and round in Louis’ mind, and he could feel his pulse accelerate as the memories came flooding back, choking his shuddering breaths on the lip of his water bottle. _‘Don’t, Zayn, don’t. Please, please shut up.’_

But Zayn didn’t shut up, he kept talking it through, speaking his thoughts and verbally processing the line from A to B and Louis heard it dawn as his own heart-rate hiked up above what was healthy, brain going into meltdown mode.

_‘Please, please, please, stop, shut up, go back.’_

“Blue,” Louis felt his throat close up at the nickname and his eyes were prickling already.   
“Tell me you didn’t, like... It wasn’t... It wasn’t _this_ right?”

Louis’ heart kept stuttering as Zayn kept speaking and he just wanted everyone, everything to _shut the fuck up._

Harry had glanced over at the interaction and it was as if he could sense Louis’ discomfort no matter their distance, attention already spiked and focused, trying to decipher the situation. He kept watching as Louis’ eyes began to water, as Zayn sat up and put a hand over the older’s, as Liam and Niall kept obliviously chattering.

Zayn put two and two together, voicing himself, and Louis wanted to crawl away and never return – because, _fuck_ fucking fuck, _why did he have to still be here_ and _why must it be brought up again?_

He couldn’t take it. Louis couldn’t take this again, he couldn’t take the confrontation again, couldn’t hear the words ‘did you attempt suicide _twice_ to alleviate us from a reunion tour?’ again, and he _couldn’t do this anymore_.

So, he ran. Louis simply stood, spat a couple nasty words and walked off as fast as he could. He reached the nearest dressing room and didn’t realise until he turned to close the door that Harry was right there behind him, following him in.

Louis faltered at the sudden presence of another human, while Harry ignored the stutter and closed the door behind them, stepping forward as soon as he could to bracket Louis’ face with his hands and rub his thumbs across the swell of his cheeks.

“Lou,” Harry murmured as the older’s breathing rate kicked up again. “Louis, what’s wrong, what did he say?”

And everything just kind of got stuck in Louis’ throat. His words, his tears, his oxygen – everything was at a stand-still and all he could do was shake his head quickly as humiliating sob wrenched its way out of him. Harry looked close to tears just seeing him, which was kind of the last thing Louis wanted, but Harry held himself together where the other couldn’t, taking the shorter man into his arms instantly.

Harry cradled Louis tightly against his chest as he sobbed loudly into the fabric of the younger’s shirt, murmuring soft hushes in his ear, along with the standard ‘it’s okay, you’re okay’, because there wasn’t much else he could say when he didn’t know what had happened. All Harry knew was that it was something really, really bad, or Louis was severely stressed and something small had broken him down because Louis Tomlinson did not just _cry_. Harry could count on _one_ _hand_ the amount of times he’d seen Louis cry.

Harry bit his lip and spotted the couch off to the side, deciding his game plan in a split second. Louis squeaked in shock as he was suddenly picked up and carried, but said nothing about it. Rather, he was burying his face further into the cloth of Harry’s shirt in attempt to hide his embarrassment.

“Okay, Lou,” Harry pushed Louis back so they could speak face to face. “Louis, you have to tell me what’s wrong.”

Louis shook his head again, sniffling, words stuck. Harry put his hands on Louis’ cheeks again, not even realising how close they were – though Louis was literally sitting in his lap with their chests pressed together – because it felt natural and there were more pressing issues at hand.

“No, no, you can’t just shake your head,” Harry pressed. “Please, what did he say?”

“He said…” Louis felt like he had no breathing space left in his lungs, the sobs racking through his body taking away his air supply. “He…”

Another wave of tears hit and Harry rubbed Louis’ back, rocking back and forth as a face was pressed into the crook of his neck yet again.

“Shh, take your time, love,” Harry soothed. “Breathe, Louis, breathe. You’re okay, I’ve got you… I’m here…”

“He was just talking about the contract,” Louis muffled into Harry’s shoulder, words coming out more like a bunch of mumbled vowels.

“Pardon?” Harry asked, tugging a little at Louis’ shoulder to pull him up.

“Just the contract, he was just talking about the stupid con-ntract,” Louis sniffed and coughed and breathed in, all of his words coming out in one big rush. “And h-how we only have to t-tour aga-ain if were all a-live…”

Louis’ breathing rate suddenly began racing again after its slow pause, reaching the point of hyperventilation as his tears and sobs came back in full blast again too. Harry frantically tried to calm his breathing down, forcing Louis to match his inhales and exhales as the thoughts frantically run about his brain.

Harry wasn’t dumb, Harry could put two and two together just as easily as Zayn did. And _shit_ , of _all things_ Harry didn’t expect to have to deal with _this_.

“Oh my God, Lou,” Harry moved one hand to the back of Louis’ head, letting his collar become the tear stained region this time as Louis continually blubbered. “Shit, Louis. Don’t. Don’t think about that.”

Louis cried harder, his voice cracking. “But I did, I did, you know I did!”

Of course Harry knew. Harry had read Louis’ notes, both times. In each one he clearly stated that they should be proud of him for getting them out of the reunion tour, that they should be happy he let them continually live in peace. This, of course, was complete and utter bullshit but it wasn’t as if Louis was actually thinking straight at the time.

“Yeah,” Harry nodded, “But that was a long, long time ago. Louis, you have worked so hard and you have done so well. We’re all so proud of you, we’re so, so fucking proud.”

Harry began rocking him again, kissing the chestnut of Louis’ hair.

“Me, Eleanor, the boys, your girls. Everyone knows how far you’ve come okay, even Zayn,” Harry assured. “You’ve done so well, and you’re going to keep it up. You’re so, so good, okay?”

“I just…” Louis sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Harry, I’m so fucking sorry…”

“Shh,” Harry hushed him, looking up to see a flicker of inked skin and black hair behind the slightly ajar dressing room door, “Don’t. It’s in the past, okay? It’s happened, it’s over and done with…”

“I’m sorry,” Louis whimpered meekly. Harry just shook his head.

“It’s okay, love,” he watched with a glare as Zayn left the doorway, headed outside. “It’s okay…”

 

//// ////

 

Louis kind of refused to admit that his breakdown happened. Harry didn’t talk about it, Louis didn’t talk about it, and all was righted in the world.

There was no question about why Harry had followed him so immediately, or how Harry had known something was wrong. There was no question about why Louis felt so protected and safe in Harry’s arms and Harry’s arms only, or how easily he dismissed the fact that only a few short days before they had broken one another.

And, like, Louis didn’t mean to end up in Harry’s bed again, okay? He really, really didn’t. It’s just that it’d been a couple of months now, they were in the middle of recording the re-vamped greatest hits album, and Zayn and Liam had been all weird with each other and Niall had that thing with Ellie still going strong and Louis was _horny_ okay?

So now they were here. He literally had Harry’s dick all way up in him and in the very little thinking space left around the ‘fuck, shit, fuck, _HARRY_ , _fuck’_ Louis was trying to understand how he had wound up in Harry’s bed again.

Because like, yeah, the sex was great but it wasn’t as if it was hard to find just as great sex. He was Louis Tomlinson, he didn’t even have to throw a stone to find good lay. So, why did he keep coming back to Harry?

Thinking about it hurt his head and staved off his orgasm, so Louis chose to ignore the thoughts and let himself revel in the feeling of Harry’s thighs under his arse, knee pressing into his back and hips crashing forcefully against the join of his thighs and buttocks.

There was a shout, a whine (that was definitely _not_ Louis, psh, _preposterous_ ), and two releases. One contained, the other all over his own stomach. Following, was a heaving sigh, a few moments to learn how to breathe again and pattering footsteps to retrieve a damp towel.

Louis thanked Harry for cleaning him off as the younger tossed the towel aside and climbed back into the bed, pulling covers over them both – then turning over with a cold ignorance.

Louis frowned, as he wasn’t one to be ignored, and shuffled closer to meld his chest against Harry’s back. Louis pressed his lips to the jutting bone at the back of Harry’s neck and felt the tension running through his veins.

“Why are you ignoring me?” the older asked simply.

“I thought you didn’t want us to ‘stand together’ or whatever?” Harry practically spat, venomous as hell, as Louis kissed along the smooth skin of his shoulder, nuzzling his nose in as he came to rest with arms wrapped tight and a sleepy edge to his voice.

“I don’t,” Louis answered, voice mumbled from fatigue and muffled against Harry’s back. “We’re just friends, Harry. Just friends. Sometimes friends fuck, you of all people should know that.”

 _‘Not friends who fell in love with each other,_ ’ Harry thought to himself, ignoring the painful tightness in his chest as he closed his eyes and put his hand over Louis’. Purely because that’s how his arm rested comfortably, of course.

 

//// ////

 

Somewhere between September and December, Louis found himself with the new knowledge that Zayn and Liam were a thing.

Like, a _thing_.

Like, Zayn was _gay_ and they had a _thing_.

Louis ignored the pointed look Harry cast his way when Liam treated Annabelle like his own daughter, he ignored how longingly Harry watched him play with Nadiyah, he ignored how desperately he wanted to fuck Harry senseless and he definitely ignored the fact that he wanted Sunday mornings with Harry in his sheets, a cup of tea in hand and his girls jumping on the bed to wake them up. Because no. That was not how this worked.

 

//// **2024** ////

 

All too soon it was January, and their tour was starting. It was the first night and Louis felt all jittery and anxious like he used to when they first started out all those years ago. Because it kind of felt exactly like the Up All Night Tour all over again, only this time they were definitely a lot older and this time they weren’t in little theatres and hotels with twitter questions and fireworks on the projection screen behind them, this time they were kicking straight into the big stuff and Louis was fucking terrified.

Only, before they went on, Liam was there being all sensible and job-orientated again, and Niall was humming some stupid song again and Zayn was all smiles and giggles again and Harry swore which just begged an admonition from Louis (which he received), and it was all okay.

Everything was okay.

It wasn’t terrifying, it was exciting (okay, still a little bit terrifying), and he had his boys (not men, _boys_ ) back on his sides and _yeah, they could do this_.

Louis had a pressing feeling he wasn’t going to be saying that about halfway into the tour, but at least he could start off optimistic.

 

//// ////

 

Louis calls it _‘the New York Incident’_.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Louis’ voice carried out in the empty, dark night, Harry startling a little in shock at the sudden noise, but keeping balanced on the precarious edge of the towering hotel building.

Harry’s head whipped to the source of the voice and just got a glimpse of Louis’ visible sigh of relief he covered up with a stern, unreadable expression.

His arms were crossed and as Harry sat down slowly facing out to the open air, he realised that Louis was waiting for an answer still, it wasn’t just a sentence to get him down. The concrete of the roof ledge was cold on his arse through the jeans, and the air running up under the pant legs was biting, which ruined the idea that everything felt numb.

Louis slowly made his way over and sat down next to Harry with his back against the ledge, just close enough that his shoulder brushed Harry’s hip and forearm.

“I...” Harry started, sighing. “I just wonder what it’s like to jump, sometimes...”

He could feel Louis tense, and Harry braced himself for the onslaught of, “don’t think like that,” and, “it’s not worth it,” and countless other useless phrases all filed under the same, ‘supportive’ category. Only, Louis wasn’t like that. He, rather, pulled his face into a perplexed expression and answered honestly.

“It’s kind of awful,” he said straight out, not looking anywhere near Harry, eyes staring ahead of him, fixed on an adjacent billboard. “Not like, all of it, not if you want it that bad, but...”

This was the first time Louis had ever spoken, properly, about _those_ _incidents_ by his own accord though they happened years ago. It shocked Harry to say the least, and he supposes he wasn’t very good at hiding his surprise but Louis was pretty good at ignoring it.

“There’s this moment, right after you actually do it, there’s this moment of complete regret...” Louis sighed deeply, looking at his hands. “In that split second before the high hits, or the pavement, that’s when you realise that you won’t be there tomorrow, y’know, that’s when you realise you _want_ to still be there tomorrow...”

Louis frowned and Harry felt an awful feeling rise through him, tightening in his throat and chest and threatening hotly behind his eyes.

“I didn’t feel that the first time...” Louis admitted. “Everything was so cloudy and muddled, and I was so, like, numb...? But... I don’t know, maybe all that therapy and suicide watch and shit finally got through, ‘cause the second time, I felt it.”

He shook his head, stuck in a memory and Harry felt something wet burn along his waterline.

“It was right after I shot up and I realised, holy shit, I have two kids and so much shit I still want to say,” he shook his head. “I have two baby girls and this is _permanent_ , I’m not coming back from this. I don’t get to see my kids grow up and I don’t get to tie up loose ends and I don’t get to tell you I love you and I don’t get to tell El in person about how much she meant to me.”

Louis shrugged. “And I then I woke up. I woke up and there was this doctor leaning over me, and he said I had a very worried family waiting for me. And I started crying because what the fuck would have happened if I didn’t wake up, and what the hell did I do to deserve a second- _third_ chance?”

A silence settled between them like a third person. Louis was stuck in the memory of everything numbing and everything fading and Harry was stuck in the memory of everything all too painful and everything all too vivid.

“I wasn’t going to jump,” Harry said finally. Louis scoffed, rubbing at his eyes and Harry hadn’t noticed until then that his voice was thicker and higher.

“No, of course not. You were going to slip and let everyone think you jumped, let them wonder for the rest of their lives what set you off and what else they could have said or done.”

“Don’t use that tone with me, please,” Harry’s face pinched. “You did that, okay, _you did that!”_

“I left-”

“I read your notes, Lou, both of them,” Harry looked down at his feet, still dangling over the edge. “They didn’t answer any of the things I’ve ever wanted to ask, it wasn’t you talking to me, they didn’t tell me why you did it, they didn’t tell me when you started hurting, or what I could have done!”

Harry was proper crying now, his words stopping and started and stuck high up in his throat. Louis didn’t interject, though he didn’t need the words spewing from Harry’s mouth. He had spent years finding reasons to leave and only after he tried did he find his reasons to live, and he still had them. Louis wanted to stay for the first time in too long — but he listened for Harry’s sake because _Harry_ needed this. He had never sorted through or communicated his own feelings about the whole ordeal and this was too long to have held on to such a thing.

“I needed you here, okay?” Harry sobbed. “I still need you and I don’t care if no one else does because I should be enough for you, when did I stop being enough for you??”

Louis stood from his place and leant over Harry to grab his hands.

“Love, c’mon, I need you off the edge,” he insisted, not answering the question, and Harry could feel how fast his heart was beating against his own back.

Pliant and conforming, Harry stood on shaky legs and let himself be dragged off the edge of the building and sat down against the same wall Louis had been at. His whole body was jumping and shaking with sobs and this let out was suddenly a lot more than his second-hand suicide trauma. Louis was kneeling between Harry’s legs, one arm around his head and the other holding both of his hands. Their foreheads were together and Louis was breathing out hushes and struggling to not cry. His empathetic reaction was already set off by Harry’s tears, let alone the context of the situation and the fact that it was _Harry_ crying and _anything_ Harry did effected Louis.

“Why wasn’t I enough for you??” the younger clamped a hand over his mouth. “Why weren’t we enough?”

Louis mouth opened, but no answer came out, nothing but a choked noise and a broken sigh. Harry cried into his shoulder for the better half of the night and when the younger man woke up the next morning back in his hotel room, bleary and blurry and still lagging behind in his sleep inertia, there was a page ripped from the travel brochure that had been in the top drawer of the bedside table, message scrawled above the advertisement for Rockefeller Centre in such recognisable handwriting.

_‘You were always enough. I just wasn’t prepared for you to be enough.’_

They don’t talk about it, but then, they never really do.


	8. CHAPTER FIVE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> harry is done

Suddenly it was this whirlwind of _plane rides_ and _Harry’s birthday_ (“Ew, thirty!” Louis had shrieked on stage, quickly reminded that he just recently celebrated his thirty-second birthday, which Louis, of course, insisted to their crowd was completely incorrect information, and that he was merely twelve) and _Niall having relationship issues_ and _Ziam certainly not having relationship issues_ and _talking about children with Zayn_ (thank fuck for someone else in that bloody band having kids), _shows_ , _shows_ , _shows_ , _more shows_ and-

“Ah!” Harry yanked his hand up to his mouth to bite down on his own arm, attempting to keep quiet while being sucked off in the middle of the night, in his bunk, mumbling into his own skin. “Fuck!”

“Shh,” Louis pulled up, giving a warning look that faltered a little at the anxious whine Harry gave, eyebrows pulled tight and sparkling eyes widened. He couldn’t deny Har- _anyone_ anything when given that look, so Louis smirked up at him, put a finger to his lips before wrapping them around the particularly thick shaft again.

And between the events and the fights and the resolutions and the carnal activities, somehow no one even realised that it was already August 15, the last day of the tour.

Harry gave a lovely speech that made Louis’ heart expand three times its original size as he looked out at the girls, their girls, who were all grown up and shit now. What happened to their fan-base of eight to twelve year olds? All of their ‘older fans’ who were above sixteen but mostly remained under twenty five? Who gave them all permission to get old and shit, start lives and families?

And then it was over.

And Harry decided he’d stay in a hotel that night rather than drive out back home.

And Louis came with him.

Unfortunately, unlike Louis was planning, they didn’t have sex. They didn’t even get to snog before they started fighting.

“Cute speech,” Louis had remarked with a find smirk as he leant against the doorframe.

“Better than anything you could do,” Harry grinned back and Louis scoffed, feigning hurt.

“I just gave you a compliment and you insult me in return?” he held a hand to his chest, wounded. “Ouch, Styles, that’s low.”

Harry went quiet for a bit and Louis waited more patiently than he had ever done in his whole life, probably, as Harry formulated words.

“You know, Niall was talking to me the other day,” the younger started slowly, at least more so than usual, “He was saying that he thought we had gotten back together… Because we act like we used to, always bickering but playfully and smiling and running off to places…”

“Are you seriously fucking doing this?” Louis stood, arms cross and face deadpan. Harry scowled.

“Yes, I’m ‘ _doing this’_ ,” he spat. “He’s right, we’re the exact same as we were, all the way back then, only this time the media management has had enough time to brainwash you into being who they want you to be.”

Louis frowned, pushing off the wall. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you’re still their little toy!” Harry scoffed. “You’re still their heteronormative experiment, ‘ _Operation, Let’s Make the Gay Kid Straight’,_ and you know it!”

“Excuse me?” Louis stepped forward, feeling anger and defensive frustration build up in him.

“You married your fucking beard for Christ’s sake, because she was pregnant and you didn’t want any bad publicity!” Harry shouted. “You are exactly what they taught you to be! Where did the old Louis go?!”

“How very fucking dare y-”

“What happened to bravery?” Harry cut him off, only just then noticing how close they were as he leant forward and poked a finger to Louis’ chest. “What happened to the Louis I used to know? That kid who stood defiant and said ‘I’m gay and if that’s a problem you can fuck off and deal with it’?? Where did he go?!”

“He grew up,” Louis glared, eyes squinting and head leaning closer.

“Oh, right, because that worked out so fucking well in the past!” Harry spat, turning around and throwing his arms up. “How many times are you going to try and ‘grow up’, try and be someone else before you realise that you can’t stop being yourself?!”

They both went silent for a while and Harry raised his chin. “That’s what this is about isn’t, you’re still too scared of being gay.”

“I’m not gay!”

“THEN WHAT THE FUCK _ARE_ YOU?!” Harry snapped, feeling his heart clench when Louis flinched. “You aren’t straight, Tomlinson, straight boys don’t fuck around for thirteen years with other boys or fall in love with other boys.”

Louis stared at his feet then raised his chin defiantly, not looking Harry in the eye.

“Well, maybe I didn’t fall in love with another boy at all,” he sneered, and Harry pretended his heart didn’t just break for the last time, trying desperately to remind himself that Louis was just being a dick, that he was in denial, that he was just saying things. Because that was it, that was the last time, and he wasn’t about to let that get to him.

“Fuck you, Louis,” he shook his head instead, trying to keep the war within his head still within his head. “Get out. Leave. I’m done.”

Blue eyes popped open in surprise suddenly, as if Louis didn’t realise that being a dick would piss Harry off.

“What?”

“Leave,” Harry persisted, pointing to the door. “I’m finished, I’m done, I don’t want to deal with this anymore.”

“Deal with what-”

 _“You!_ God-fucking-dammit I’m sick of putting up with _you_ , now just _GET OUT!”_ Harry yelled, not swaying from his point, his voice dangerously close to breaking. “I’m _tired_ , okay? I’m so fucking tired of putting up with you, running back and forth while you _still_ try and figure yourself out! Louis, I’m _drained_. I remember how bad it hurt, I used to literally fucking feel my heart break, okay?”

Harry shook his head with wide eyes, in complete disbelief of himself. “It doesn’t hurt anymore, I’m not _stabbed_ anymore, my heart doesn’t _snap_ anymore. It’s just always hurts, all over. I physically cannot find any more strength within myself to put up with you anymore.”

Louis still felt it, the snap in his chest like a string breaking under pressure, and he felt it then. It wasn’t stinging, it was painful emptiness that burned all over. As soon as he could hear the words, ‘it doesn’t hurt anymore’ his own heart completely fucked itself over, stopping in place and breaking apart at all its badly-sewn seams. ‘It always hurts all over,’ was like salt to the wounds, only it wouldn’t help them heal at all, it just hurt.

“I’m sick of dealing with management’s little fuck up, okay? I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.”

“Harr-”

“No, we’re done, this is over,” Harry shook his head, turning and walking into the en-suite. “Just get the fuck out of my room.”

 

//// ////

 

Louis has the girls over for New Year’s because he’s single and not doing anything and Eleanor asked him nicely because she wanted to mingle at a friend’s party. They watch the fireworks together, their little family of three, and Louis tries really, really hard not to think about Harry.

 

//// ////

 

Harry spends New Year’s at a party, fucks some random guy and pretends he’s not pretending it’s Louis.


	9. CHAPTER SIX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> new year, new girl

//// **2025** ////

 

Niall proposes to Ellie and invites them all over for a low-key engagement party (Louis doesn’t go, but sends his congratulations), Liam and Zayn are closer (and Louis has a feeling they’ve come out to parents or friends or something because he went with Zayn to get his tattoo and remembers him talking about telling his parents or something), and suddenly its March.

 _March_.

The last time Louis spoke to Harry was August, of the previous year, which means it had been a whole seven months since they last spoke.

And Louis, over that time, continually denied how badly he missed Harry. Because he knew he was in love, he had stopped denying that at this point. His problem was that he was scared, okay, he was so scared of what was to happen, how they would work, if they put all their effort in and broke up only a few months down the track, what people would speculate, et cetera, et cetera.

And then out of nowhere Liam and Zayn, like, got engaged and came out all in the same twelve hour space and Louis knew he needed to talk to Harry but he backed out every time.

He had seen the tabloids, seen the pap shots, seen the twitter updates – Harry was actually having fun without him. He was going out, he was with friends, he was performing, he was writing, he was acting, he was in interviews, he was _good_. And Louis had to learn how to be okay with that.

But, all too quickly it was _June_ and they were having a ‘reunion party’, catching up as the five of them (“plus significant others” the invite said) with close crew members and a couple assorted other old friends and Louis was still debating whether to amend things with Harry or to sweep them under the rug.

 

//// ////

 

“I thought you liked boys,” Carter smirked as Harry’s lips hit her collarbone. Harry shrugged one shoulder.

“And girls, did you forget?”

“Okay,” Carter reworded herself as Harry suckled at her neck. “I thought you liked one boy in particular?”

Harry face fell a little, and he set his jaw. “I really, really don’t like him actually.”

Carter chuckled and lay down, grinning up at Harry. She knew this was a meaningless rebound and suspected that Harry was more than likely only going to see Louis anyway, regardless of her girly bits – but honestly, Harry was a good fuck and she didn’t care.

“Good,” Carter grinned as Harry softly lay his body over hers.

So what if Harry wasn’t over Louis, and so what if he ignored the voice in his head telling him to stop because he knew it wouldn’t lead to much good? So what if he told that voice to shut up because the only person who’d get hurt from this would be Louis, who didn’t have to know?

And hey, if Harry only came up with the plan whilst lying in bed after fucking Carter, then no one had to know that either.

 

//// ////

 

“Louis!” Niall cried out as he opened the door to greet the older man, standing awkwardly alone in the front door. He knew he wasn’t going to be the only single one at the party, so he didn’t bother trying to find a date, and Louis honestly didn’t care at this point if he was single or not because he simply couldn’t be bothered trying to find someone.

Louis was ushered into the main room where he greeted the others, finding Lou and Lux and deciding it was a very nice gesture on Niall’s part to invite them (finding out from Zayn that Harry had insisted on Lux coming along) and he was basically just waiting for Harry so he wouldn’t feel so left out from the whole couple thing an-

“Hazza!” Niall greeted and Louis felt a wave of relief, turning only to find that relief a shattered, sinking boat of hope as Harry pulled a girl – a _girl_ – inside and introduced her to everyone as his _girlfriend_.

Since when did Harry have a girlfriend?

She was pretty, sure. Cropped, bleached hair, a round face with a little dimple in one cheek, soft brown eyes (although they might have been green, Louis couldn’t really tell) and clothes that looked like they were straight out of a punk magazine.

 _‘Or a whorehouse,’_ Louis thought to himself distantly, hoping his smile was convincing enough as he shook her hand.

“Louis,” he introduced himself with a nod.

“Ah,” she smiled. “Heard a bit about you. I’m Carter.”

Louis’ face fell, and he didn’t really know how to respond after the whole ‘heard a bit about you thing’. He didn’t pick up that she was making suggestive eyes at Harry, or that her accent was Yorkshire, or that she was treating the new baby they went to greet like an angel (contradicting the witch-prostitute character that Louis had envisioned), because his mind was whirring far too loudly as the cogs in his brain tried to connect why Harry would talk about him.

 

//// ////

 

Zayn kind of brushed against his shoulder as everyone was moving into the other room and gave him this look and Louis groaned – loudly – right in his face.

“ _What_ , what are you pushing me for?” he asked, frustrated and fed up. Zayn silenced him with a look and pulled Louis into another room, away from everyone else.

“Fuck, Lou, just _tell him_ ,” Zayn insisted. Louis rolled his eyes.

“Tell who?? And _what?”_

“You know what!” Zayn snapped. “You know exactly what, you know that right now I’m telling you to tell Harry you have feelings for him! Fucks sake, Louis, you’re a grown man.”

Louis squinted, looking suspiciously at him. “Why the fuck are you telling me to confess to the guy who just got a girlfriend – his first relationship in several years, by the way – that I love him? I didn’t really think you were the home wrecking type. Besides he knows.”

“Does he?”

There was a pause, the next stern, “yes,” coming out a little more hesitantly, because now Louis was asking himself too.

Zayn rolled his eyes and scoffed, turning to walk out of the room. “Just fucking tell him, Louis.”

“I feel like you know something I don’t,” Louis answered back with a frown. Zayn smirked and turned to him, walking backwards out of the door because he likes to think he’s an extravagant motherfucker.

“Don’t I always?”

 

//// ////

 

Carter didn’t go away. If Louis knew anything about Harry’s relationships it was that if they stayed longer than twelve hours there was a three day to three week period before they broke up. The longest relationship Harry had, the only one that last longer than a month, was with him.

And now Carter too, apparently. She was being spotted by paps now, by herself. After a second public outing with Harry Styles (she only needed one to get rumours lain out, two to spark the powder), Carter had her own career being followed closely, everyone looking into her.

She was trending on Twitter (or, she and Harry were, in two places, _‘Harry and Carter’_ and _‘Harter’_ , it was disgusting) and Louis did not care to admit that he stalked the hashtag to see what was being said about her, who she actually was (of course, _after_ the quick Wikipedia search). She was a musician, Harry wrote songs for her, they’d been friends and co-workers for years and there were rumours because there was always rumours, she was openly bi and-

 _Oh_.

“I guess Harry has a theme,” Louis rolled his eyes, trying not to feel jealous, or angry, or hurt, or frustrated, or upset, or betrayed, or anything else he was feeling.

 

//// ////

 

**_[@Louis_Tomlinson_ ** _: Open **]**_


	10. CHAPTER SEVEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it happens.
> 
> [i dont really like how this goes tbh but]

It was August by now, almost a full fucking year since they had last spoken properly when everything blew up. Niall had invited them both around (along with a bunch of other people) for an early birthday celebration between friends and maybe Louis and Harry found themselves snogging in the bathroom, and maybe there was the inevitable-

“Stop,” Louis pushed at his chest, breathing a little ragged. “You have a girlfriend.”

And Harry’s mouth opened and closed but nothing came out, and Louis left the room feeling shameful and miserable and-

“Lou?” Harry’s voice beckoned softly, Louis’ feet stopping without permission because at this point every part of his body listened to Harry more so than him. “Can you please come back to her house, with me? I want to talk to the both of you…”

And then somehow Louis was following Harry’s car and questioning when the hell this became his life.

 

//// ////

 

It had started with a small banter outside while Harry got drinks from the outside fridge and Louis criticized him from the backdoor. Harry had put the drinks down, to make some snide remark about something neither of them even remembered and then somehow it got to Carter and from there it was just, “Carter, Carter, Carter,” in Louis’ mocking sneer.

“Where the hell did she even come from anyway, you suddenly just have a girlfriend after years of fucking around?”

Harry rolled his eyes, hands on hips. “We’ve been best friends for years, thank you.”

Louis scoffed. “‘Best friends’, ha! _That_ ends well.”

“You _don’t_ get to say that to me.”

And so on and so forth until it eventually reached the inevitable-

“So, what?” Louis snapped. “You don’t even wait for me?”

“Louis, I’ve been waiting for almost fourteen years!! I fucking love you and you love me back but you’re too scared to do anything!!”

Harry’s shoulders were falling with the effort they took to rise with his inhales.

“That doesn’t mean you get to go prance around with some nice new blonde right in front me!!”

Harry gaped. “Double standards!!”

“HOW?!”

“You were _married_ , you have _KIDS_ , WHAT DO YOU MEAN _‘HOW’?!”_

Louis huffed. “What do you want me to say right now, Harry? That I’m happy for you both?”

“No,” Harry stood up straight, crossing his arms. “I want you to kick and scream and admit that you’re fucking jealous, and I want you to accept yourself and me!”

Louis blinked at him.

“Please tell me you’re fucking kidding.”

“I’m not kidding!” Harry snarled. “She’s _fake_ , she’s my _best friend_ , Louis, I was _never_ dating Carter! It was to try and get you to _do_ _something_ , anything!”

Louis felt stupid. Very stupid and a little mad, his jealousy ebbing and rage at Harry for doing such a ridiculous thing (and also now telling everyone ever) flowing in.

“When will you wake up and realise how disgustingly pathetic I am for you??” Harry continued. “Realise that _it doesn’t FUCKING MATTER what THEY THINK!? When_ are you going to _realise_ that _WE AREN’T ONE DIRECTION ANYMORE?!”_

There was a tense awkward silence and Harry’s eyes closed in an audible groan as he heard a rustle in the bushes behind them.

“Would you kindly _fuck off?!”_ he yelled behind his back, Louis ignoring the interaction entirely.

The two stared, Harry’s chest heaving with slow, heavy breaths that sound more like a constant stream of sighs and Louis’ fingers tapping out an erratic, syncopated rhythm against his trembling thighs.

Maybe this was it, this was the line that they crossed, the split in the pathway. They could tumble off the cliff together, try again and admit everything — or blow it all like they usually did and never speak again. Because they both knew that if they fucked up now, Harry wasn’t going to come back, no matter what. Maybe this was their big, make or break moment, rather than fifteen years ago when Louis blurted out an unnecessary “wanna fuck, like, more?” instead of his smoothly planned ‘hey, I know a really cool place people take their boyfriends and girlfriends and shit, do you wanna come with me?’.

Little Louis had absolutely no clue what was to come over the next few years, had no clue that, _that was definitely not their make or break moment_.

“Fine then,” Louis grit his jaw and tried not to collapse as anxiety rushed hotly through his veins. He took a step back and threw up his hands in the air, taking note of Carter’s figure at the back door to spy and the rustling bushes of badly hidden paparazzi, perhaps a fan or two with a camera.

“I AM COMPLETELY AND UNDOUBTEDLY IN LOVE WITH HARRY EDWARD STYLES!!” he shouted, loud enough for the next two houses to hear, arms dropping. There were camera flashes and barely hushed gasps and an audience of one gathering by the glass doors inside the house.

“Louis, what are you doing?”

“I’M A _COWARD_ ,” Louis pointedly looked, to see if he was saying the right things, as he ignored Harry’s shocked question. “AND _OBNOXIOUS_ , AND _RUDE_. AND I DON’T DESERVE HIM AT ALL, BUT I LOVE HIM ANYWAY. And now you all have _that_ for tomorrow’s fucking headline.”

Harry’s face was bright red, visible even in the moonlight, grin so wide it looked painful and his sleeves over his mouth to try and hide it because he couldn’t stop smiling. Louis raised his arms in a humiliated shrug, letting them slap back down against his thighs.

“Well?” he coughed, shaky enough to cry because they had both just said so much and it would no doubt be all over front covers tomorrow. “Happy? Is that, like, um... is that what you wanted?”

“Did you actually just do that?”

Louis looked up, feeling his whole _self_ fall apart completely. He couldn’t handle that, he actually could not handle finally working up the courage to put his soul on a plate, visible to the whole world with an admission that the newspaper would be printing like mad for the next ten years – only to be rejected.

“I… y-yeah?”

Harry looked, and felt, fifteen years old again as he ran at the shorter man and wrapped his arms around him, mumbling a litany of ‘yes, yes, yes’ into Louis’ hair, each of their hearts beating at a million miles an hour in perfect synchrony.

Louis didn’t bother fighting the grin off his face at the feeling of Harry in his arms, free and forever. It wasn’t a fling behind closed doors or a fleeting moment on thin ice, anymore. He revelled in the feeling, flexing his fingers and pushing them into the fabric of Harry’s shirt, arms squeezing tightly.

“You know so many people have footage of this, right?”

Harry laughed into Louis’ neck and nodded.

“Yeah, I know,” he answered. “We’ll watch it all in the morning and laugh at it, yeah?”

Louis nodded, blushing and laughing and hyperventilating and crying internally because, oh right, they could _do_ _that_ now. “Yeah.”

They didn’t even have to stumble inside with tinted cheeks and a rushed excuse to get going, rather stayed put as Carter came outside with Louis’ keys and their jackets, picking Harry’s keys out of his pockets and practically shoving them towards Louis’ car.

“I’ll bring your car some later time, Styles,” she smiled, “Go fuck your idiot into the mattress.”

 

//// ////

 

Harry had issued for visible signs around his property warning trespassers off years ago, he had restraining orders and privacy orders and they were safe inside his house, free to be as loud as they wanted, and Louis had never been more thankful for it – because it was no secret that their relationship probably had the most controversy surrounding it (of their time at least) from the minute someone got a tip off that _HarryandLouis_ might be _a_ _thing_.

And nothing like this had ever happened before in the industry, not that Louis knew of at least. They were an incredibly high-profile pair to begin with, already shrouded with speculations and scandals, drowning in rumours and now there was a _video_ of Louis Tomlinson _publically confessing his love_ for Harry Styles.

Louis didn’t want to think about how long they were going to be staying inside Harry’s house just to keep away from the chaos outside, and honestly, he didn’t care.

 

//// ////

 

“St- Louis, stop,” Harry pulled his face away. “You have to promise me something.”

“Mm, what?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Harry said simply, catching Louis’ attention. “I don’t want the tug-of-war and the fighting and the pretending, okay? I love you, and you’re either going to be with me, in a relationship, or not. Promise me this isn’t another useless hook up.”

They were on the bed, still relatively clothed though probably not for long and Harry had this look like he was freaking out, a look that said, _‘I don’t know what’s going to happen and it’s scaring me, and I need you on my side right now_. And Louis had this look he always had, this look that said, _‘I know what I’m doing, babe, I’m in control and you’re freaking out’_ a look that said, _‘I’ve got this’_.

“Didn’t you hear me, before, or do I have to say it again?” Louis remarked as he leant back down softly, stopped by a palm on his nose.

“I heard you,” Harry whispered softly. “And I believe you, and I love you, trust me. But I need you to understand that I’m not going to follow us back and forth again. If you’re doing this you’re doing it, you can’t get scared and back out in a month.”

Louis sat up on his knees and raised an eyebrow.

“You think I’m going to back out?”

“Marry me,” Harry suddenly blurted, and Louis coughed out a noise of surprise.

_“What?”_

“This is forever or not happening,” Harry fumbled with his fingers, nervous as hell. “Louis, will you marry me?”

Louis suddenly got cross, little pout forming on his face and he surged forward to kiss the proposal away.

“No, you little shit, take that back right now,” he grumbled. “I was going to propose later to try and fix us, stop stealing my thunder.”

Harry chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“No,” Louis rolled his eyes. “You never said it. I have to go and find a ring and shit and then surprise you even quicker now, Harold, you’re ruining all my plans.”

Harry pulled his lips into his mouth tightly as his smile split wide, dimples popping deep and mouth opening in a loud laugh when Louis poked one.

“So,” he chuckled, legs slowly curling to wrap around Louis’ hips. “We’re getting married?”

“Shh! It’s a surprise. Now, darling, do us a favour and fuck me.”

 

//// ////

 

HARRY AND LOUIS GETTING MARRIED?!

HE SAID YES

LARRY STYLINSON ENGAGEMENT!

HARRY A TOMLINSON-TO-BE?

 

//// ////

 

“Why does everyone think we’re getting married?” Harry frowned deeply, eyebrows drawing low and close. “Like, how do _they_ know?”

Louis chuckled and tapped around on his phone a little more, sliding it over to a video edited together of his proclamation and Harry screaming out ‘YES!’ again and again. Underneath were a couple of gifs and captioned pictures of the same moment, a list marking the things that happened to explain to people who hadn’t watched the video (all of which insinuated that Louis proposed) et cetera, et cetera.

“That’s why.”

 

//// ////

 

They stayed indoors for about a week and by then Harry was running scarily low on groceries and take out was not an option anymore (oh, that poor, poor delivery boy having to get harassed by paps). Harry was in the middle of calling Carter when Louis got an idea.

“Hey, Harry?” he called, definitely _not_ smiling at the fact that he was wearing Harry’s shirt _freely_. “Do you reckon she could give us a lift back to my place?”

“Why?” Harry asked, holding the phone away. Louis shrugged, walking into view.

“It has food, it’s not here, it’s a change of atmosphere, El’s probably going to drop the girls off on the weekend?”

Harry mulled the thought over for a moment, eyes distant as he mentally weighed up the pros and cons and a plan of attack. He turned back to the phone, speaking directly to Carter about the plan, but Louis didn’t miss the look that was thrown when Harry noticed the shirt.

 

//// ////

 

“So,” Carter smiled, looking in the rear view mirror once the car was on the road and didn’t have people crawling all over it. “Proud of yourselves? Made quite a stir, in case you couldn’t tell.”

Harry grinned at her cheekily, like a child caught with stolen sweets and took Louis’ hand in his. It was then that Carter noticed Louis’ shirt and clicked her tongue, eyes going back to the road.

“Jesus Christ,” she cursed. “I thought you guys might, like, slowly work this out or something. Apparently we’re diving in head first?”

Louis rolled his eyes and Carter smirked, tongue between her teeth.

“Reckon you should get a really good pap shot of you in that shirt, Lou, Harry only wore it last week when he was out with me.”

Harry laughed much harder than he should of when Louis stepped out of the car and kept his arms out so that the shirt was completely visible.

 

//// ////

 

“What are you doing?” Harry mumbled, voice deep and rumbling with sleep as Louis brushed his fingers through Harry’s curls and kissed the column of his throat, cuddling deeper.

“Shh,” Louis hushed him, humming, “I’ve just missed you. Go back to sleep.”

 

//// ////

 

“Hey,” Harry tapped Louis with his toe, sinking back into the couch further. “I’ve just realised something.”

“Mm?” Louis responded, eyes glued to his laptop where he was currently sorting out all of his bloody bills and emailing people at the label, thank you.

“I don’t even know how you identify.”

Louis’ hands stopped and he looked over at Harry, blinking, because it was true. Harry didn’t know. Harry _couldn’t_ know, more specifically, no one knew except Liam, Eleanor and his mother. Louis had sort of figured himself out _after_ he and Harry had stopped talking all those years ago.

“I’m bi,” he answered, face unmoving and voice as if it were something he had only just realised himself. Harry made a noise of appreciation, and went back to watching the telly while Louis returned to tip-tapping away on the laptop.

There was a prolonged pause of silence before Harry spoke softly again.

“You know what? Like, only if you’re comfortable with it, you should do something for bisexual awareness week, like, now that we’re out and all…”

“Shit, is that coming up soon?”

“Mhm, like, next week or something. Bi- _day_ is on the twenty-third.”

“I should do that,” Louis nodded. “Would you do it?”

“Yeah, probably.”

And that was that.

 

//// ////

 

Louis didn’t know what Harry had watched or read on the internet, because he knew he did that sometimes and got all weird, so he didn’t comment when he woke up to curls draped across his face and lips pressed to his forehead, familiar voice whispering, “I’m sorry… I love you so much…”

And however long later, which was probably not that long at all in terms of the rest of their lives, when Louis woke up and traced Harry’s tattoos once each for every apology, Harry didn’t comment either.

 

//// ////

 

 **[@LouisTomlinson]** Heyy I wrote an article for bi-awareness week   Check it outttttt !!

 **[@LouisTomlinson]** Lets stop bierasure !!!

 

//// ////

 

**LOUIS TOMLINSON SPEAKS UP ABOUT HIS SEXUALITY!**

_The former boy bander came out as half of ‘Larry Stylinson’ (what the fans have dubbed his relationship with ex band mate Harry Styles) about two weeks ago, and this morning an article [below] was published to the international gay-pride organisation, The Rainbow Post, explaining his trials through self-exploration and how he discovered his own sexual identity. The piece was entitled ‘How to Hate Yourself the Tommo Way’ with a smiley face in place as the authors name (though he later revealed in a tweet that it was his own) with an ending footnote reading, “my boyfriend edited this.”_

_But when was Louis Tomlinson ever known for being serious about anything?_

_Read the article below._

 

 **“HOW TO HATE YOURSELF THE TOMMO WAY”** by, **:)**

From birth to twelve years old, my entire focus was friends and pranks and Power Rangers. But the onset of puberty and childish questions in a Truth or Dare game brought in what was to be the focus of my life for the next fifteen years — who I liked.

Young, barely-teenage me was obviously first to look at girls because twelve year old boys looked at girls. Crowded around the kid who got a hold of his dad’s magazines or staring after the sixteen year old in a bikini on the television, _boys liked girls_. It was that simple, it almost always was.

When I was about fourteen, a rumour started running around the school that a boy called Andy was gay. I didn’t even know what that meant for about a week, and I didn’t really care. When I learnt what the word meant I still didn’t care, thought it was a little strange, but it didn’t affect me. I wasn’t the gay one.

Learning the meaning and discovering it was possible, however, got me curious. I distinctly remember watching a video of two guys and getting about three seconds through before closing the tab, deleting my history and shutting the computer down entirely. I didn’t bother with the thought for years to come, I pushed it all aside.

Guys were attractive, perhaps, but I wasn’t attracted to them. Surely.

I pushed away these thoughts and focused on girls, because girls were nice and _I_ _liked_ _girls_ — so I couldn’t like boys.

Years passed, and I somehow managed to find myself almost eighteen with a certificate in one hand (barely made it, but I got there) and a blonde on the other (barely managed that too, girlfriends are hard work), and in an X-Factor audition because a ‘why not?’ suddenly became ‘oh shit this is happening’.

And at the audition, something I cannot and will not forget, meeting the most ridiculously awkward, nervous little shit you’ve all come to know as ‘Harry Styles’. I came to know him as ‘Curly-from-the-bathroom’. First member of One Direction I ever met, besides myself.

Someone call him or something, too, he still owes me a new pair of non-pissed-on shoes.

I don’t know _why_ I remember meeting him so clearly, just that I do. Nothing actually happened. I’ve read what you think, read speculations that we hooked up or “love at first sight” or whatever, but none of that happened. We met and said hello and Harry was the first person to say something nice about my face that wasn’t a relative pinching my cheek.

You know the story from here, X-Factor, didn’t get through individually, made into a group, round after round after week after week — somewhere along this line we started something, Harry and I. I can’t be bothered with specifics because (don’t tell him) I can’t actually remember what was said and how, when or why.

All I know is that we were ‘Larry Stylinson’ more than just because we ‘got on really well’, thank you, Styles.

During this point in time, back on the X-Factor, after breaking up with my gorgeous girlfriend someone should remind me to get back in touch with, was when I had a long, hard think about things. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of wondering and researching, and Harry, I’m sorry, but I used you as an experiment for about a week to see if I was comfortable.

It was here that I decided, “wow, I’m really fucking gay.”

I don’t know why it took me that long to figure out, I mean, there’s a picture of me at age five in high heels and a pink feather boa — and later at twelve in the same costume because I was the only boy willing to wear a dress in the school play.

Either way, THAT MOMENT _RIGHT_ _THERE_ was where I accepted that I was _not_ straight.

But this is not the end of the story, don’t groan, for I was wrong. And I can admit that.

Breaking up with Harry was honestly one of the most difficult and heart breaking things I have ever done. Before you all start jumping to conclusions, we decided mutually somewhere in 2011 to not be together, because the stress was too much. Love didn’t conquer management, press, hate and fans anymore.

So, after this, I became very confused. Because once Harry was out of sight and tactility, girls were okay again. I’m still taking painkillers from the headache that gave me.

So, distraught and confused, I marched with the boys all the way through identity crises, drugs, girls, rumours, pretending I didn’t just blow my ‘best friend’ in a dressing room, tours and shows, a lot more rumours and one quarter-life crisis.

It was sometime in that space where I realised that I would constantly swing back and forth between ‘definitely gay, ugh, yes, girls are no’ to ‘what the fuck was I thinking I am in fact straight’ to ‘they both look really, really hot’.

Do you see where this is going? I didn’t.

So, it took me until I was twenty-three (twenty-fucking-three whole years of life) to realise, _“Holy SHIT,_ what if I’m _bi?!”_

Let’s all take a moment to give a round of applause for that nine year late epiphany. So, over the space of the next two years, I researched more, did a bit of experimenting and came to the conclusion that _YES_ , I am.

(Harry calls me “abrosexual” but I forget what that even means most of the time and feel like it’s a hipster way of saying ‘confused’.)

It was an excruciatingly long journey from A to B (this seems like a long time, but keep in mind I was touring and in the spotlight and unable to experiment or really even think from 18 to 24), and if there is anything I hope people will take away when they read this is that it’s really difficult to figure yourself out, _but_ , at the core of it all:

The only person who has to know is YOU.

You don’t have to label yourself, or tell people if you have. It is none of their business what you get up to in your spare time.

And so, final note,

I, Louis Tomlinson, am bisexual and — _finally_ — proud.

_[my boyfriend edited this]_

 

//// ////

 

 **[@Harry_Styles]** @LouisTomlinson “touch-ness-range” is not a word. It’s ‘tactility’, darling. Or ‘within touching range’.

 **[@Louis_Tomlinson]** @Harry_Styles haha   shut uupppp  !!

 

//// ////

 

“I can’t believe you forgot how we became official, _Lewis_ ,” Harry rolled his eyes as Louis fondly grinned at all of the comments below his article and the twitter mentions in response to his and Harry’s public tweet-interaction.

“Do you remember?” Louis raised an eyebrow at him with a smirked and Harry faltered.

“Yes,” Harry made an accusing face. “It was just before the third X-Factor diary, you crawled into my bed in the middle of the night and asked if I’d be your boyfriend and Zayn threw a pillow at us.”

Louis waited for a moment, trying to remember these event before he turned to a giggling Harry with a sneer.

“That is complete and utter bullshit!” he crowed, tossing a couch cushion at the younger lad. “I never asked to be boyfriends while we were on the show. We fucked the night before that third diary, but I _never_ asked to be your boyfriend.”

Harry laughed even harder. “So you _do_ remember!!”


	11. CHAPTER EIGHT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oops.

“Hey, Harry?” Carter whispered down the phone at nine am one fine October morning, a month after Louis and Harry had yelled at each other in the backyard. “We have a problem…”

“What do you mean?” Harry frowned, worried for his friend. “Is it work?”

“No… well, not really,” Cater answered ambiguously. “Um. It’s just that, um, I’m like… I’m pregnant? And I’m pretty sure it’s yours.”

Harry blinked, whole face falling and stomach sinking and churning, though the man was assured the dry, tightness of his throat would prevent any vomit from getting up.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he breathed out shakily, receiving a harsh noise from Louis, warning him against swearing as the girls were over. However, upon seeing how pale Harry was, the older man revoked his reprimand.

“I wish I was, love, I _truly_ wish I was. I’m so sorry, I know you finally sorted it all out with Lou, an-”

“Carter, don’t worry about that. Focus on this situation right now, this is…” Harry looked up and caught Louis’ gaze, turning around to go to another room, closing the door quietly. “This is your baby, Cart. Are you…”

Harry bit his lip and tried not to say it, Carter cutting over him.

“Keeping it?” she paused, sounding on the verge of tears which was so, so unlike her. “I don’t… I don’t know… Harry, please, can you come over? I seriously don’t know what to do and I really need your help here, _please_ …”

Harry nodded helplessly and whispered that he’d be there soon. He stood up after ending the call, turning to the door and opening it only to find a shocked Louis standing on the other side.

“She’s pregnant?” was the first thing to fall from the shorter’s lips and Harry nodded with an exasperated sigh.

“Uh huh, don’t tell her I told you,” Harry bent down to kiss him swiftly. “I have to go see her, okay? You understand, yeah? I’m so sorry for leaving you with the girls, but she needs me.”

Louis nodded, wrapping an arm around Harry’s waist and kissing his cheek, pulling back to let his boyfriend go.

“Just tell me if and when you’re coming home, okay?” Louis asked, cautious and mildly worried about things he didn’t know what for yet. “I’ll be dropping the girls back at El’s around five.”

Harry nodded pocketing his phone and picking up his keys. “I love you.”

“Love you,” Louis nodded, watching him leave. Something was going on, and no matter how badly Louis wanted to jump to conclusions and be sneaky in the hopes of discovering the truth, he trusted Harry and was going to wait patiently until he was told what was going on.

 

//// ////

 

Okay, so maybe Louis wasn’t really all that good at the whole sitting still and trusting thing.

He guesses sitting on the couch with a glass of water and late-night television, theorizing how Harry could be cheating on him with Carter wasn’t really all that _trusting_.

Honestly, he had finally sorted all of his shit out with Harry, they were finally together and everything was finally okay and _already_ he was doing this. Already, Louis was waiting up and jumping to conclusions like a bored housewife.

Maybe another cup of tea would calm his nerves.

 

//// ////

 

_‘Please don’t be awake, please don’t be awake, please don’t be awake…’_

Harry slid his house key into the front door, thirty minutes to midnight, praying that Louis was asleep. He had sent a text a few hours ago saying he would come home tonight but it would be when everyone was asleep, begging for Louis to not wait up for him (and maybe that was to avoid conversation). He pushed the door open quietly and walked in, breath held, toeing off his shoes-

“Hi,” Louis piped up from the couch and Harry winced.

“Hey…” Harry waved awkwardly, closing the door and walking over to the couch. He jumped down next to Louis and snuggled up into his lap.

“You’re acting suspicious,” Louis snickered. “Coming home late, not telling me what’s going on, being extra lovey…?”

He was joking of course, but Harry could hear the defensive tone behind the words. Louis was actually scared of what he had been doing, and that kind of just made everything worse.

 _‘He’s going to hate me and I’m going to die,_ ’ Harry thought, ever the optimist.

“Well,” he sat up, tuning so that he was facing Louis directly. “I’m going to tell you something and you probably won’t like it.”

Louis looked nervous and Harry, taking his hands into his own, could feel his fingers trembling. Louis was really scared and Harry didn’t know how to fix it, because Louis might be okay with this, he might be happy with it or he might be really, really mad.

Louis nodded slowly, egging him on and waited with a cautious expression. Harry decided to just blurt it out all in one shot.

“We’re going to have a kid.”

Louis’ jaw fell and his eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly, lips pouting just a hint.

“What?” he breathed, confused as ever.

“Well,” Harry repaired. “ _I’m_ , at least, going to have a kid. You get to decide on the whole ‘me’ or ‘we’ thing…”

Louis just sat and stared, not processing the information.

“You’re having- Harry, you’re a…” and that’s when it clicked, Harry watching his face relax into an open-mouthed, distant stare as the penny finally dropped. “She’s having your kid.”

Harry nodded with tight-pressed lips. ‘ _Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit_.’

“What the _FUCK?!”_ Louis stood suddenly, startling the younger man. Harry held up his hands.

“Lou, calm down-”

“I will not fucking calm down!” Louis spat, pointing a finger. “When-”

“Before us,” Harry answered calmly before he could even ask. “It was before us, Lou, I would never.”

Louis’ face fell, body language calming dramatically. The biting quips were sitting on the tip of his tongue, burning along the line of his teeth and so ready to snap, ‘so, what, back when you were sixteen?!’ but Louis himself had two daughters with a woman he never loved, whom he technically dated while in an _actual_ established relationship with Harry. No matter how badly he wanted to make a snide remark, Harry wasn’t in the wrong.

“You…” he sighed, sucking in a deep breath through his nose. “So, she’s, she’s keeping the baby?”

“Yeah,” Harry bit his lip. “Louis, I’m sorry-”

“Don’t,” Louis shook his head. “Love, I had my daughters over today, don’t be sorry if we weren’t together…”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth and let out a deep breath. Harry bit his lip.

“So, you’re not… you’re not mad?”

“I’m mad,” Louis answered, looking up at him. “I think? Maybe more jealous? I mean, you fucked her, and I’m not happy about it, at all. But I’m not _allowed_ to be mad. I’m working on not being mad.”

Harry giggled a little. He could see the frustration Louis was attempting to keep inside of him, fists shaking and breath short. It was almost amusing, watching Louis attempt to quell his anger.

“I love you,” Harry amended, receiving a sharp glare for his amusement. “We’ve been over that, haven’t we? I have loved you for a very, very long time, and this doesn’t change that. Besides, um… now we get a kid? Without going through the masses of paper work?”

Louis rolled his eyes but didn’t protest when Harry wrapped his arms around him and kissed the side of his head.

“I’m going to need your support in this, Lou,” he pleaded. “I’m really, really scared, okay? I made a human being and in not even a year I’m going to be completely responsible for it and I want you with me…”

Louis was quiet. Then-

“You know, typically people get married before they have children, Harold.”

“You said you wanted going to be the one to propose, so that’s on you.”

Louis just huffed and pulled them off to bed, promising Harry that he was going to fuck him into the mattress to handle his jealousy, ‘just not tonight, though, because today has been a lot already’ and they fell asleep with bodies tucked close together.

True to his word, the next morning Harry made a very close acquaintance with the mattress, which probably did not appreciate him screaming into it.

 

//// ////

 

Louis, again true to his word, was the one who proposed, a few days later. A pretty ring, a plain white gold band (he debated having it inscribed but the tattoos on their skin seemed pretty permanent enough of a symbolism). He woke up early and felt like it was right, and he waited for Harry to wake up and smile at him, before pulling out a ring and asking for Harry’s hand in marriage, curled up into the covers, ring glinting in the early morning light.

Harry barely even cried, only tearing up just a little before he rolled over on top of Louis in a hug with a shout and giggles and kisses and so many yes-s the word almost lost its meaning.

 

//// ////

 

“How long have you two been together, exactly?” Liam frowned, trying to do the math in his head as he processed the engagement.

“I mean, technically we’ve been together a month,” Louis admitted on one hand, “But then we’ve technically been on and off for fourteen years, and _technically_ Harry proposed a month ago but we didn’t make it official, so, I think it’s really about time.”

 

//// ////

 

“Louis! Louis!” they were all screaming at him and _for fucks sake_ he was just trying to get inside the bloody hospital. “How do you feel knowing your fiancé cheated on you??”

Louis stopped at that and turned, ignoring the flashing cameras and the tug of the bodyguard’s hand on his shirt.

“He didn’t cheat on me, ever. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my son is being born.”

Louis let himself be dragged through the front doors, leaving behind a cacophony of his name and flashing cameras.

 

//// ////

 

Louis was the sixth person to hold Daxton.

The labour was long and loud and gruelling, and Louis was waiting outside with Carter’s stepmother and two sisters while Harry and Carter’s father were in with her.

“H-hi,” her younger sister had waved shyly at him. Louis waved back, and said nothing.

“I’m Lily,” she said again a few minutes later.

“She was the biggest fucking fan when she was thirteen,” came a snappy retort from the oldest sister, who looked just as stressed as Louis felt. “Just do us all a favour and say hi, or sign something.”

Louis engaged Lily in short conversation for a few minutes, got a picture or two with her and signed a maternity pamphlet with a pen borrowed from one of the nurses milling around. He then sat nervously away from the women, foot tapping like mad and eyes bouncing back and forth between the floor and the time.

Louis thinks he might have heard a shout about something after a few hours but that might have been wishful thinking, and as he kept looking at the clock his hands shook a little more and his heart rate picked up.

Because what if something went wrong? Over the past nine months he had been just as involved with this as Harry if not more because he had done the doting-husband-of-a-pregnant-woman thing twice now, and the son-of-a-nurse-making-her-own-army-of-children thing, and understood what Harry didn’t sometimes. He had heard the worries Carter had – she was thin, her blood pressure was barely average, she was often sick, etc.

Louis was twitchy, and sitting closer to Carter’s older sister who looked about his age, the two of them sharing looks that read the same thoughts.

“Hi,” she mumbled after ten minutes of silent sitting had passed. “My name’s Rachel.”

“Louis,” he responded, nodding at her. She looked anxious. Louis only then noticed the emblem on her hoodie – she was a paramedic. She knew.

And suddenly the door opened and a doctor walked out, gloves off and mask being pulled down off his face to reveal a smile.

“It’s a boy,” he grinned and Louis sat in stunned shock with Rachel while Lily and the step mother squealed in joy, the mother’s tears already welling. Louis wasn’t expecting Rachel to grab his wrist the way she did, relief and shock creating the biggest smile on her face, hand over her mouth.

Louis laughed and squeezed Rachel’s hand reassuringly as the doctor calmed the cacophony and said they all could go in if they were quiet.

Louis was sixth, after Harry (who Carter insisted was to be primary caretaker to the nurse who looked furious when he was to hold the baby first), then Carter, then Carter’s father, then Anne who was blubbering all over him as expected (the only reason, Louis assumed, Harry wasn’t doing the same was because he was in shock), then Rachel who skipped past Lily and handed him back to Harry.

The room eventually began to clear, slowly, until it was just Louis, Harry, the newborn boy and a sleeping Carter left in the room, all family leaving with a promise to return tomorrow.

Harry was sitting in the chair by the bed with his baby in his arms, and he looked up to meet Louis’ eyes, standing carefully to hand him over. Louis straightened up a bit, holding out his arms in the careful exchange. Between the birth and the family and the nursery and now he’d barely gotten to see the kid at all, but now he was here, in his arms, up close.

“Oh my God,” Louis breathed as the tiny thing was placed delicately in his arms. “Look at you…”

He was gorgeous, he was. Obviously, there was no comparison to Louis’ own daughters, but this was technically his son or step-son or something, and he was beautiful. His face looked nothing like Harry’s, except the eye shape. He had a little turned-up nose identical to Carter and both of her sisters, her lips, her cheeks, her ears. But Louis didn’t ignore the green of his eyes, or their shape and the distance they were from the bridge of his tiny nose – all so familiar. He didn’t, couldn’t, ignore the dark tufts of hair – they would go blonde for a few years before returning to the brunette he know so well.

He was a perfect mix of them both.

“Did you finally end up choosing a name?” Louis asked, his voice surprisingly soft. Harry hadn’t been present when his girls were born – or Louis around any newborn, really – he hadn’t entirely expected his voice to be so gentle.

“Uh, yeah,” he frowned. “Daxton Marshall. She picked it.”

Louis looked up at him, face open and sort of questioning but not really, rocking Daxton so, so gently in his arms. Harry was staring straight at his baby, _his baby_ , he didn’t even really see Louis’ expression.

“She said if we’re raising him, she at least gets to name him.”

That perked Louis’ interest, eyebrows raising noticeably and eyes widening, a short breath sucked in as his neck straightened.

“So,” he looked over at Harry. “So she-”

“She doesn’t want custody,” he shook his head. “She’s asked for visiting rights, obviously, and he’s going to grow up knowing her and having her as a positive role model or something. But she wants to tour still, and keep up her job and she wants him to have a stable parental unit.”

Harry finished, biting his lip, before giving up some internal fight and holding his arms out to take Daxton, who was easily and carefully handed over.

They didn’t speak, Louis just smiled as he watched father and son, his to-be-husband and to-be-son, reaching forward to tilt Harry’s elbow ever so slightly to cradle Daxton’s head.

“He’s a baby, Haz, he barely even has bones yet,” he chuckled delicately, smiling up at him so he knew it was a joke. “Can’t very well expect the little guy to hold his big head up just yet.”

“Big head?” Harry looked almost scandalized.

“Between you and Carter, he’s been born with an inflated ego, I’m afraid,” Louis shook his head like it was bad news, Harry frowning and pouting because he couldn’t even playfully slap him with a baby in his arms. Maybe it was a progressive measure just so Louis could make jokes, putting Daxton in his arms.

There was tender silence, both of them standing close with Daxton cradled between them, Louis brushing Harry’s curls aside and Harry gently kissing his forehead with a careful eye on the baby.

“I love you,” Louis said gently, voice startling in the serenity no matter how timid. Harry just looked at him for a while, everything that had transpired between them swirling in his eyes, all the years of love and torture and heartbreak and the same damn thing pulling them back together over and over again.

“I love you, too.”


	12. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a bet.

Niall slid up next to Zayn and coughed.

“Ahem, Malik?” he addressed, ignoring the ‘Payne-Malik’ correction that was so obviously about to slip from the older’s lips. “Do you remember a very, very long time ago, on X-Factor, when we made a bet on when these two knobs would finally sort their shit out and get together?”

Zayn squinted, trying to bring up the memory.

“Uh... yeah? Barely?”

“Well, I’m here to say I want my money back,” Niall crossed his arms. “You won because you said they’d get together before we were halfway through the comp.”

Zayn scoffed. “Yeah, and I was _right_ , man. They were all over each other for over a fucking year.”

Niall smirked. “Ah, yes, but I said they might fool around but it would take a long time for them to actually get together.”

“Oh my- _Niall.”_

“I’d say it’s been quite a while, and I think you owe me money for rightfully winning.”

“Really?” Zayn looked at him incredulously. “What the hell did we even bet? Like-”

“Ten quid.”

Zayn groaned. “What about Liam? He bet too!”

“He said they wouldn’t get together, he loses either way. Now, I want ten quid.”

“Niall, you’re worth, like, seventy million pounds, why the fuck are you pestering me for _ten?”_

“Because I earned it! Rightfully!” Niall held out his hand. Zayn rolled his eyes and scoffed, digging into his pocket and slapping twenty pound into Niall’s palm.

“Keep the change.”


	13. BONUS

**HEY HEY HEY. you may be here because you finished this!! if you finished, HOLY SHIT COME CUDDLE ME, BRO, EVEN I WOULDN’T WANT TO FINISH IT. *hands out drinks and cookies acquired to any and all dietary needs* I love you from my heart and soul and would feel very, very happy to receive comments, no matter what they say. :)**

 

 

[BONUS SCENE]

Harry bounced Daxton on his hip gently as they departed the hotel, one hand lacing over his boy’s eyes on instinct to shield him from the camera flashes. There were people screaming out questions as well as those trying to catch his attention for a photo and a scattered few with things waving about to sign. Harry felt joy and love concealing his panic and shock, signing as many papers, posing for as many selfies and answering as many questions as possible until Daxton started getting restless and unsettled. The girls cooed and awed at him, smiling and waving and for the most part understanding that Harry couldn’t exactly hug them because he was holding his baby.

Harry walked away when Daxton started whining, apologising and rushing off to the silent car with windows tinted to dull camera flashes.

He may or may not have signed everything he could with, ‘Harry Tomlinson’.


End file.
